TONY ULWICK

Tony Ulwick is the pioneer of jobs-to-be-done theory and inventor of Outcome-Driven Innovation. He is an innovation expert, author, and entrepreneur... Early in my career as a product engineer, I experienced the ultimate professional disappointment: for 18 months I put my heart and soul into creating a product that failed in the marketplace. It was 1984, and I was part of the IBM PCjr development team. We were working on a product that was supposed to revolutionize home computing. In advance of its release, the Washington Post wrote, "the PCjr will quickly become the standard by which all other home computers are measured." So you can imagine my surprise when instead, the day after we introduced the PCjr, I woke up to read the headlines in the Wall Street Journal declaring, "PCjr is a flop." I was shocked! As we learned over the next few months, they were right. It was a flop, an embarrassment that cost IBM over a billion dollars and put a blemish on its reputation... My career has..

Primary location: Denver United States