What is a performance surplus?

In the Jobs To Be Done framework your customers have a job to do, and they hire your product to complete that job. They have set needs (functional, social, emotional) and if your product matches those needs then they hire your product.

But what happens if you over serve your customers? What if your product does a lot more than they need? This is a performance surplus.

In his theory of disruptive innovation, Clayton Christensen discuses a scenario where products continue to innovate and get better faster than what their customers need. When this happens it creates an opportunity for a new entrant to create a new cheaper product that is not as good as the industry leader, but just good enough to serve the needs of the customer.

Examples include the iPhone E and the Macbook Neo. Both of these products are at the low end of the market functionally - and their price points reflect this. The Macbook Neo for instance (on launch) is an iPhone chip inside a small laptop, it is designed for people who do not need very powerful compute and for whom a more expensive laptop is just a waste as they could not use the extra power they are paying for. By creating these products Apple is defending itself against low end disruption by offering products that do no over serve their customers.