And when seeing his internal recommendation algorithm team hitting the wall in recommendation accuracy, Hastings boldly created a 1M$ "Netflix Prize" competitio

And when seeing his internal recommendation algorithm team hitting the wall in recommendation accuracy, Hastings boldly created a 1M$ "Netflix Prize" competition to create a better recommendation algorithm [0]. This boosted research efforts in the field and earned him and Netflix respect in ML academic circles. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Netflix_Prize