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Scott Anthonys recent front-page article in Strategy & Innovation (When Can You Sustain and Win? available by subscribing here) discusses circumstances when upstart innovations can succeed by offering best-in-class performance at premium prices. These success stories are important to study and understand, but be careful not to apply the label high-end disruption too quickly.

Take Whole Foods Market, the highly successful retailer of organic foods. The companys prices are notoriously high relative to traditional grocers and the quality of its products are seemingly well-beyond the good enough performance one expects from a disruptive business. So, is Whole Foods a high-end disruptor?

The jobs-to-be-done framework offers a suprising answer to this question. What jobs are Whole Foods customers trying to get done? Presumably, most want to buy fresh, organic or naturally-raised foods that they feel good about serving to their family.

Seen in this light, Whole Foods really is not competing with traditional grocers, which in the past offered almost no organic or all-natural products. To accomplish the above job, customers needed to go to either small, specialty natural food stores or perhaps local farmers markets.

Independent natural food stores are hard to find, and they tend to have limited selection and rather low turnover, meaning their prices are often even higher than Whole Foods. Farmers markets also tend to have high prices and they normally are open only a few times per week.

When one considers the jobs that customers are trying to accomplish, Whole Foods in fact seems to be a classic disruptor: Not only is it offering (slightly) lower prices, but the added convenience of prominent locations, regular hours, and wide selection is enabling new and greater consumption in a variety of contexts.

Whenever you think youve spotted a high-end disruptor, spend some time carefully thinking through the jobs customers are trying to get done. Then, determine which companies, if any, in the market are actually helping them accomplish those jobs. This jobs-based approach can offer surprising insights into how successful companies are actually competing.

"By Clayton M. Christensen