One day in 1997, Reed Hastings found a missing Apollo 13 video that he’d rented from Blockbuster. He’d racked up $40 in late fees, which he paid when he dropped off the video on the way to the gym. While working out, he had the epiphany that would lead to the birth of Netflix. Inspired by the subscription model used by most gyms, he could design a video subscription service following the same principle. It could allow people to borrow as many videos as they wanted for one flat monthly fee. He tested the idea by mailing CDs to himself to see how they fared in the postal system. They arrived in great shape, and Hastings went forward with his plan.
The success of Netflix shows how inspiration from one field or discipline can catalyze groundbreaking change in another. This story demonstrates the vital importance of getting out of our own silos and exploring how ideas across disciplines can shape how we work. Never be afraid to question existing models and methods, so you can arrive at ingenuous new solutions with far-reaching impacts. By leveraging ideas from the fitness arena, Netflix became one of the world’s most successful businesses.
AI Generated·May contain errors
Consider the birth of Netflix. Back in 1997, Netflix co-founder Reed Hastings was a software
developer and he racked up a bunch of late fees when he misplaced Apollo 13, the movie. And after
he found the missing cassette, he dropped it off at his local Blockbuster. Remember Blockbuster?
Along with a 40 minute late fee on his way to the gym. In the middle of his workout,
Hastings had an epiphany. His gym, like most other gyms, used a subscription model. You could
pay $30 or 40 a month and work out as little or as much as you wanted, he recalls. That epiphany
was the seed that created Netflix. Hastings took a concept, the subscription model, from a completely
unrelated field, fitness, and applied it to video rentals to create one of the most lucrative
businesses of all time. He started to investigate the idea of how to create a movie rental business
by mail and decided to validate the idea in a creative way. He said, I ran out to Tower Records
in Santa Cruz, California and mailed CDs to myself, just a disc in an envelope. It was a long
24 hours until the mail arrived back at my house and I ripped them open and they were all in great
shape. This is when Hastings went forward with his plan. The success of Netflix shows how inspiration
from one field or discipline can catalyze groundbreaking change in another. This story
demonstrates the vital importance of getting out of our own silos and exploring how ideas
across disciplines can shape how we work. Never be afraid to question existing models and methods
so you can arrive at an ingenious new solution with far-reaching impacts.
By leveraging ideas from the fitness area, Netflix became one of the world's most successful
businesses.
