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Calling Netflix a pivot is maybe wrong in my mind. It is same model in essence just done differently, renting content. From physical to digital which means lowe

by Ekaros 2y ago

Calling Netflix a pivot is maybe wrong in my mind. It is same model in essence just done differently, renting content. From physical to digital which means lower overhead and you are just moving your own customers from one to other. Basically it is optimization of process not replacement.

al_borland 2y ago
Right, but they didn’t get stuck in the DVD business and fail like every other video rental service. They changed the business to serve the greater mission of letting customers watch a lot of movies, rather than thinking their job was simply to make renting DVDs easy. It seems natural, because they did it well, but look at Blockbuster. Imagine if Netflix stuck with physical media, and then Hulu came out. Netflix would have been toast. Maybe they would have acquired RedBox to hang on for a while longer, but ultimately physical media rental would have only taken them so far. Netflix was willing to cannibalize their own DVD business for the future streaming business. A lot of companies aren’t willing to sacrifice their golden goose for an unknown future. Apple has been good at this as well. The iPod was most of their business, and then they released the iPhone which effectively killed the iPod. Then they released the iPad with the expectation that it would eventually take a huge chunk of the laptop market. If a company evolves well and is willing to cannibalize their own products, they don’t need to take the radical Hail Mary pivot. Looking back the iPhone seems like a pretty natural evolution for Apple, but compare that to Microsoft. They missed the boat, had a few false starts, and effectively missed the entire move to mobile. They’ve made up for it in other areas, but a few big misses like that and companies die. Look at BlackBerry; they botched the move to the modern smartphone and were done. They were too worried about hanging onto the past and trying to carry it forward in some way. It doesn’t seem like a big pivot to make for a phone company, but it was enough to sink them. Nokia too… a shell of what it once was.

by Ekaros 2y ago

al_borland 2y ago

Right, but they didn’t get stuck in the DVD business and fail like every other video rental service. They changed the business to serve the greater mission of letting customers watch a lot of movies, rather than thinking their job was simply to make renting DVDs easy. It seems natural, because they did it well, but look at Blockbuster. Imagine if Netflix stuck with physical media, and then Hulu came out. Netflix would have been toast. Maybe they would have acquired RedBox to hang on for a while longer, but ultimately physical media rental would have only taken them so far. Netflix was willing to cannibalize their own DVD business for the future streaming business. A lot of companies aren’t willing to sacrifice their golden goose for an unknown future. Apple has been good at this as well. The iPod was most of their business, and then they released the iPhone which effectively killed the iPod. Then they released the iPad with the expectation that it would eventually take a huge chunk of the laptop market. If a company evolves well and is willing to cannibalize their own products, they don’t need to take the radical Hail Mary pivot. Looking back the iPhone seems like a pretty natural evolution for Apple, but compare that to Microsoft. They missed the boat, had a few false starts, and effectively missed the entire move to mobile. They’ve made up for it in other areas, but a few big misses like that and companies die. Look at BlackBerry; they botched the move to the modern smartphone and were done. They were too worried about hanging onto the past and trying to carry it forward in some way. It doesn’t seem like a big pivot to make for a phone company, but it was enough to sink them. Nokia too… a shell of what it once was.