Climbing the Product Candy Mountain: How to Get to the Core Problem with Jobs to Be Done

I recently watched O Brother, Where Art Thou?, starring George Clooney, John Tuturro and Tim Blake Nelson.  It’s an entertaining film set in the Deep South during the Great Depression. The movie blends adventure and comedy with a soundtrack that revives early 20th-century American folk, bluegrass, and gospel music.

One song that stood out was "The Big Rock Candy Mountain," first recorded by Harry McClintock in 1928. The lyrics paint a picture of a simple paradise:

In the Big Rock Candy Mountains
There's a land that's fair and bright...

Where there ain't no snow
Where the rain don't fall
The winds don't blow
In the Big Rock Candy Mountain

It got me thinking. In Product, we often chase our own version of the Big Rock Candy Mountain; a place where every stakeholder is happy, customers get exactly what they ask for and features magically drive engagement and revenue.

But just like the mythical paradise in the song, that perfect product doesn't exist.