Dorrian talks about a coffee shop’s core competence, but he is aiming pretty high hoping for a table that doesn’t jiggle.

I just want coffee in a cup that doesn’t leak.

The coffee shop owner obviously buys cups from a wholesaler, the decision on which cups to buy probably is based on how the cups look, price of the cups, ability to get custom design, how cute the sales person is and many other decisions which probably does not involve actually using the cup with coffee for longer than 10 minutes.

I’m not quite sure the lesson to learn here for web site or software development, but for some reason it reminded me of Joel’s thoughts on core competency. I’m not sure if Joel would really recommend to the coffee shop owner to make his own cups.