Seven Lessons From How Blockbuster Failed To Handled Disruption
A cautionary tale of a business that failed to identify that they were being disrupted
“Success is a lousy teacher. It makes smart people think they can’t lose.” –Bill Gates
Falling off a perch is not a pleasant feeling for an individual or a company. However, falling is a trait among warriors, and rising after a fall is a champion’s hobby.
For this to happen, an individual or a company needs to be sitting right up to the pile of all other competitors for several years to lose track and fall so hard that the company usually ends up in a bankruptcy file.
In 2004, Blockbuster’s video rental company owned 9,094 stores and employed approximately 84,300 people. No one matched the size and magnitude of their video collection. So they survived when the world went from VHS to the shiny round discs.
In 2000, Blockbuster was approached by Netflix, a small company renting movies with a home delivery USP, with a price tag of $50 million.
However, Blockbuster thought that the new strategy was beneath them, and they felt they were far too big to be taken down due to the number of stores/employees they had under…
