Right before I left Netflix, CEO Reed Hastings brought in Professor Hamilton Helmer to teach a mini-course on the 7 Powers: the foundation of Business Strategy (you should read his book). One of those powers was counter-positioning. At its core is the idea that if your competitors try to emulate your business they will eat themselves alive. Netflix was counter-positioned to Blockbuster (and the entire DVD rental industry). Sure enough, one of the reasons Blockbuster went under is that their business model wasn’t structured to allow them to emulate us. Fast forward to 2019 and this. Netflix has escalated the pay scale of creators significantly. Not to mess with those competing for talent, per se. It’s more of an extension of the high-performance culture. And it is possible because of the way they are structured to think about content cost and customer acquisition and retention. So, now studios are forced to pay these outsized salaries with no meaningful structural change in how they think about monetization. It is fascinating to think we may be watching history repeat itself. #business #strategy #counterpositioning #Netflix #Blockbuster #customeracquisition #customerretention #content #OTT #streaming #businessstrategy …see more