How Blockbuster Nearly Killed Netflix, and then Stole Defeat from the Jaws of Victory
How a so-called technological disruptor, Netflix, was nearly killed by the incumbent, Blockbuster, before it made a grievous error.
Home of the calibration case method.
Accelerate your understanding of business by browsing our case selections. Pick a concept, and then read the cases within them. As you read, compare and contrast between each case: what are some surprising similarities? What are some surprising dissimilarities?
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How businesses and businesspeople deal with disruptive shifts — where something they believed to be true, or that they had built their business around, changes at a fundamental level.
A collection of cases on scale economies as a competitive advantage.
What capital expertise looks like in a business context — both the good and the bad.
A collection of cases on counter-positioning as a competitive advantage.
The central problem of business is that you find something lucrative, and then competitors copy you and drive profits down to the opportunity cost of capital. This is what that looks like.
The dominant concept that drives competition in consumer technology.
How a so-called technological disruptor, Netflix, was nearly killed by the incumbent, Blockbuster, before it made a grievous error.
It’s difficult to imagine today, but databases were once a hot technology, in a crowded field. This is the story of how Oracle won the database wars of the 70s.
Ford was the only American automaker who didn’t need a bailout in the Great Recession. How did they adapt to an unprecedented financial calamity?
Amazon is known as one of the few dotcom darlings that survived the dotcom bust. This is how they did it.
McKinsey founded his eponymous firm, but died before it scaled globally. This is the story of how McKinsey’s protege Marvin Bower built McKinsey into the firm we know today.
How an accounting professor started a firm that changed the world.
How Yvon Chouinard — a ‘reluctant businessman’ built Patagonia to show the world that it was possible to make money and do good for the environment.
This is the story of how the creation of the Swatch Group, and its namesake plastic watch, led to the turnaround of the entire Swiss watch industry.
What happens when business expansion, done for entirely rational reasons, ends up tanking your company because of a once-in-a-generation disaster that nobody could have foreseen?
Ample Hills Creamery exploded on the back of influential fans. And then it died. Here's why this is a textbook example of bad business expansion.
How Leonard Lauder steered the brand through a disruptive shift unlike any other.
How Mark Roberge went from engineering to sales and built a high performance sales organisation from scratch.