TIM KASTELLE: One day towards the end of a 175-mile bike

ride with his friend Jay, Gary Erickson had an epiphany that would ultimately lead
to
his founding of his successful company Clif Bar Inc.
In his book Raising the Bar: Integrity and Passion in Life and Business – the Story
of Clif Bar Inc., Erickson says: “I had eaten five of my six [energy bars].
I was exhausted and famished.
In cycling they describe what was happening to me as bonking: my body was out of
fuel
and had no more energy.
I needed to eat my last [energy bar], yet I suddenly realized that I couldn’t choke
it down.
I just couldn’t put it in my mouth.
Fortunately our ride from the top of Mount Hamilton was downhill.
It was right then, as Jay and I rode down Mount Hamilton, that epiphany number one
in
the Clif Bar journey hit me.
“I think I can make something better than this.
Something that if you needed to eat six of them, you wouldn’t have to choke the
last
one down.”
The bike epiphany was a purely intuitive moment.
Yet it brought together three elements of my life in a way that made sense: my
passion
for cycling, my food sensibility, and my experience running a bakery.
For me, great cycling and great food didn’t need to be separate.”
Clif Bars are a rare example of a new idea that took off almost instantly.
We can use the story of Erickson and Clif Bars to explain how to use a tool that
can
help us have more impact with our own ideas – the Value Proposition Canvas.
The Value Proposition Canvas, or VPC, is another tool from Alex Osterwalder, Yves
Pigneur and
their team.
It is designed to work with a Business Model Canvas – it helps you figure out your
Value
Proposition, and your Customer Segment.
The VPC has two parts.
On the left are the things that we need to think about creatively to deliver our
value
proposition – the Products and Services that we’ll offer, and the Pain Relievers
and Gain Creators associated with them.
On the right are the things you need to learn about your target customer group.
For each group, we need to work out their Jobs to Be Done, and the Pains and Gains
associated
with these Jobs.
This is the part that takes hard work – so it’s the part that people often skip.
For now, we’ll focus on the hard part – the right hand side.
What key things is your customer trying to accomplish?
What goals are they trying to achieve?
What emotional needs is your customer trying to satisfy?
How does your customer want to feel?
Are there problems your customer might have that they’re not even aware of?
When Gary Erickson had his idea for Clif Bars, he was thinking about the jobs that
serious
cyclists are trying to accomplish.
One of their goals is fitness, but there others as well – like friendship and fun.
To achieve the levels of fitness that Erickson and his friends were looking for,
they had
to go on long rides – which means that needed nutrition to keep themselves going
all day.
So his two key jobs to be done were: take long bike rides for fitness and fun, and
to
have enough food along to fuel his body while doing this.
The next thing to look at is Customer Pains.
These are the things that make it hard to achieve their Jobs to Be Done.
We need to find the answers to questions like: What are the main difficulties and
challenges
they are running into?
What do they think of as too costly – is it too much money, too much time, or too
much
effort?
What risks do they fear?
Gary Erickson had two big pains when it came to bringing along food to fuel his
bike treks.
The first is that whatever he brought with him couldn’t be too heavy – so he needed
food with a high energy density.
The second was that he wanted food that wasn’t horrible to eat – as he said:
“Something
that if you needed to eat six of them, you wouldn’t have to choke the last one
down.”
The third thing to look at is Customer Gains.
These are things that are wins – answering questions like:
What current value propositions delight your customers?
Why?
What positive social consequences are they looking for?
What savings would make them happy in terms of time, money or effort?
How do your customers measure success and failure?
What they view as a win?
When Erickson had the idea for Clif Bars, he had several clear gains in mind.
He wanted high energy density food that wasn’t just acceptable to eat, but
delicious.
And he wanted something that was natural and healthy – after all, the overall goal
here
was fitness.
Gary Erickson didn’t use the Value Proposition Canvas to design Clif Bars – but you
can
see how the logic behind the tool was at work.
Once he knew what he wanted to achieve, he started working with his mother to solve
the
technical problem of how to make a health bar with high energy density that was
also
delicious.
Once they solved that problem, he was ready to launch Clif Bars.
To have impact with our great ideas, we need to understand the value that we’re
creating
for people.
The Value Proposition Canvas is a great tool for helping us work out what people
value,
and how to delight them with our creative ideas.