Much of my most recent teaching on grad and post-grad courses has been looking at how Lean Startup thinking and tools are changing the way organisations ‘go-to-market‘ (GTM) and that being arguably a different approach to those based on more traditional marketing ‘fundamentals.’

That’s included showing how Lean Startup thinking and tools map on to the evolution of the marketing mix (e.g. 4Ps, 7Ps, 4Cs, etc) and other frameworks like SOSTAC taught by likes Chartered Institute of Marketing. What’s interesting is that the Stategyzer progression of tools/templates does not have any for the GTM phase:

The Lean Startup ‘Better Together’ diagram at the top by AXA’s former group head of digital Yves Caseau integrates Growth Hacking as the GTM phase. It builds on earlier version by Dave Landis and although growth hacking can be shown as the means of scaling consumer platforms that leverage the network effect (e.g. Facebook, Instagram, WhatsApp, etc). What’s less clear is whether that kind of GTM approach is the route to business success with B2B solutions, e.g. in the build environment and commercial real estate.

And it is that problem together with the missing go-to-market jigsaw piece in the Strategyzer progression of tools/templates shown above that my market engagement approch helps solve. Short version is by using the late Clayton Christensen’s jobs-to-be-done framework as not just the means of creating better and more innovative products, but also by using it to put the research back into marketing communications to find insights and talking points, i.e. provoke and stimulate the market, start/inspire discussion and develops ’follow through’ via active engagement (see more on the why of this here, here and here).