Every technology leap quietly resets the baseline of what people consider normal. A feature arrives as a delight, gets copied and habituated into an expectation, and ends up as table stakes — invisible when present, a dealbreaker when missing. The bar only moves one way: up. Which means standing still isn't holding steady. It's falling behind. Run the years forward and watch it happen.
Each row is something that once made a company stand out. Drag the year — or hit play — and watch every marker slide rightward: from delight, through expected (the baseline of normal), to dealbreaker if missing. The newest arrivals are the only delighters left.
Runs on its own — scrub the year only if you want to. Illustrative timing, not precise dates; the point is the direction of travel. Notice there's no way to move left. Expectations don't relax; they ratchet.
The treadmill isn't anyone's strategy — it's the combined effect of how people and markets behave. Tap a card for the longer version.
Here's the catch: the treadmill has already moved while you were reading. For each capability below, decide what it counts as right now, in 2026 — a delight that still wins points, something merely expected, or a dealbreaker that loses customers when it's missing. Five quick calls.
You can't get off it, and you can't slow it down. But you can run it deliberately instead of being dragged by it. Tap a card for the longer version.
The uncomfortable version of this question is specific: which of your current advantages are quietly becoming table stakes, where are customers already expecting more than you offer, and what could you ship that resets the baseline in your favour? Working through that for a real organisation is exactly what our strategy sessions are for.
Talk to us about staying ahead of it