Table Stakes

You may find yourself hearing the same feedback from customers, even though you’ve been making investments/progress in that area for a long time. What’s going on?

Consider whether it is because customers have become accustomed to the new offering, and it becomes table stakes to them: it’s part of the basic offering, and it’s asusmed. And now they want more. I think one of the most obvious examples of this is “build times”.

Consider the fact that continued investment into a specific area is at risk of diminishing returns. You’ll put more and more effort to eek out less and less return. When you’re in this situation you need to search out “step function” changes.

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Jevons Paradox, which states the following, seems to be relevant here.

In economics, the Jevons paradox occurs when technological progress or government policy increases the efficiency with which a resource is used (reducing the amount necessary for any one use), but the rate of consumption of that resource rises due to increasing demand.

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