OUR APPROACH
A systematic approach to understanding customer needs
The Opportunity Engine is built on a rigorous, evidence-based methodology that has been refined over two decades of real-world product strategy work. Here is how it all fits together.
THE FOUNDATION
Jobs-to-be-Done
At the heart of our methodology is a simple but powerful insight: people do not buy products — they "hire" them to get a job done. A commuter does not want a car; they want to get to work reliably, safely, and on time. A product manager does not want a survey tool; they want to understand what customers truly need.
Jobs-to-be-Done (JTBD) theory shifts the focus from what customers say they want to what they are actually trying to accomplish. Jobs are remarkably stable over time — people have been trying to "get to a destination on time" for centuries, even as the solutions have evolved from horses to ride-sharing apps. This stability makes jobs a far more reliable foundation for product strategy than chasing feature requests or demographic trends.
By understanding the job, you reveal the underlying need. And when you understand the need, you can build solutions that genuinely matter — solutions that customers will switch to, pay more for, and recommend to others.
THE FRAMEWORK
Outcome-Driven Innovation
While JTBD tells us what job the customer is trying to get done, Outcome-Driven Innovation (ODI) gives us a precise way to measure how well that job is being served. ODI breaks every job into its component steps and, for each step, identifies the desired outcomes — the specific metrics customers use to judge success. These outcomes follow a consistent format: "minimize the time it takes to..." or "reduce the likelihood that..."
Once you have a complete set of desired outcomes, you survey customers to measure two things for each one: how important is this outcome, and how satisfied are you with current solutions? Outcomes that are highly important but poorly satisfied represent underserved needs — your biggest opportunities for innovation. Outcomes that are low importance but high satisfaction are overserved — areas where you might be over-investing.
This importance-versus-satisfaction framework, known as opportunity scoring, removes the guesswork from product strategy. Instead of debating opinions in a conference room, teams can align around quantified evidence of where customers need the most help.
OUR EVOLUTION
How AI changes the game
Traditionally, applying JTBD and ODI required weeks or months of manual analysis. Expert researchers would read through hundreds of interview transcripts, carefully extract desired outcomes, map them to job steps, deduplicate overlapping statements, and validate the results. It was rigorous, but slow and expensive — which meant only the largest organizations could afford to do it well.
The Opportunity Engine changes that equation. Our proprietary OutcomeLLM has been trained on over 20 years of expert-written outcome statements paired with their original voice-of-the-customer sources. It automates the extraction, classification, and deduplication process while maintaining the quality standards that previously required senior researchers. What once took a team of consultants several weeks can now be accomplished in minutes — making evidence-based product strategy accessible to teams of any size.
PODCAST
State-of-Innovation
Martin Pattera explores the methods, mindsets, and mistakes of customer-driven innovation — with guests who've shipped products that actually matter.