20,000×1 != 1×20,000

Alchemy is about taking existing or marginal resources and deploying them for non-linear effect. Sometimes small changes go boom.

One way to see this is in the expression 20,000×1 != 1×20,000. Rory Sutherland introduced this idea through travel. A new rail line, Sutherland said, that saves many people a few minutes is worth less than a change that saves a few people many minutes.

Another example Rory gave was airline lounges. A sole traveler visiting a lounge many times a year gets a small benefit whereas that traveler with their family twice a year gets a huge benefit. In each case the same number of scones are consumed, but the effect to the consumer is different.

A real life example is the Credit Karma Save program.

“One of the things we noticed was that there’s strong deposit behavior around paydays and we wondered if there was a way to do nudging around paydays. So we created a savings boost program where just by depositing a dollar that month you’re eligible to win twenty thousand dollars that month.” – Kyle Thibaut, The Science of Change, October 2021

That’s not all. Credit Karma also offers Instant Karma, a cash reimbursement program for their debit card users. Every transaction is a chance to win that amount back.

I’d wager that the Credit Karma accounting for “customer reward” or “interest paid” or such, is similar in scope to the competition – but having a few large chunks rather than many small ones is a golden idea.

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It’s always nice to validate an idea with an “out of sample test”. Does this work elsewhere? Marc Andreessen riffed on the idea that there are only bonds and call options.

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March 28, 2022 update. Previously this idea was in the Landslide post which covered: sun and skin damage, landslide prevention, and Marc Andreessen on the culture of work.