Table stakes

Definition

The minimum requirements needed to compete in a market, borrowed from poker. What you need just to get in the game, not to win it—though many companies mistake this for a complete strategy.

Example Usage

Mobile optimization is just table stakes now; we need actual differentiation to compete.

Origin

Poker terminology adopted by business strategy in the 1980s

Fun Fact

Most companies spend so much effort on table stakes that they forget to develop an actual winning hand.

Source: Business strategy terminology

Related Terms

Intermediate

BHAG

Big Hairy Audacious Goal—an ambitious, decade-spanning objective that's supposed to inspire organizations but often just inspires confusion and burnout. Pronounced 'bee-hag' by people who enjoy making business sound like a fantasy game.

💼 Corporate / Business

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mushroom management

A leadership style where employees are kept in the dark and fed manure, only to be surprised when expectations suddenly appear. Information hoarding disguised as a management strategy.

💼 Corporate / Business

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Offsites

Meetings held away from the office, theoretically to promote creativity and bonding, but mainly to trap employees somewhere they can't escape. Strategic planning meets mandatory fun.

💼 Corporate / Business

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vrin

A strategic analysis framework (Value, Rarity, Inimitability, Non-substitutability) that you were supposed to learn in business school, except your professor got distracted talking about economic moats for a month straight. Now you're staring at the exam wondering why those four weeks of rambling didn't actually teach you how to use the damn thing.

💼 Corporate / Business

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retro

The fashionable celebration of things from decades past, because apparently we've run out of new ideas. In business contexts, short for 'retrospective'—a meeting where teams discuss what went wrong and promise to do better next time (spoiler: they won't). The aesthetic choice that lets you charge premium prices for furniture that looks suspiciously like what your grandparents threw out.

💼 Corporate / Business

Intermediate

syndicate

A fancy word for a group of businesses or individuals who band together to pull off something too big or risky for one entity alone—think organized collaboration with a whiff of organized crime energy. In media, it's how your local newspaper gets that comic strip; in business, it's how deals get done when no one wants to go it alone.

💼 Corporate / Business

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