The "Duh" post

I'm losing my taste for fiction as I age, so seeing a movie isn't something I automatically do on a free Friday or Saturday night. Netflix may be changing that. Rather than arrange plans around showing times or carve out a lazy weekend for a movie "bender" (arranged around the rental "window"), DVDs just come and go via the regular mail.

No news of course--not even to me, who have been (justifiably) accused of living under a rock. But it's a lovely example of disruptive technology; the surprise is how long it's taken to go mainstream. But it's also a prime example of how business benefits by aligning its model with how people actually interact with the product. In retrospect, it should seem "obvious" that anyone in the movie rental business--even back in the days of VHS--should have grokked that a monthly subscription fee (a.k.a. capitalizing on inertia) would more than make up for unreturned movies.

"Obvious" except for our pesky reality, in which (as they say) history is lived forward and understood backward. The town where I grew up (Eau Claire, WI) sported a business that offered unlimited rentals for a flat monthly fee, back in the late 1980s. It turned out to be an elaborate scam, with the company in question decamping in the middle of the night.

The takeaway, however, transcends decade. The closer you can tie your business model to the reality of how people use your product or service, the more you stand to capitalize on that. Not a bad lesson for any industry, and something that should be a "Duh" kind of thing. But, sadly, too often it isn't.