Nurture?

The first Blockbuster store opened for business in 1985. At its peak in 2004, it achieved revenues of $5.9 billion and consisted of 60,000 employees and 9,000 stores. It filed for bankruptcy in 2010 and was sold at auction in 2011 with an estimated $87 in liabilities and obligations. By the end of 2015, it ceased to exist.

In 2000 during the dotcom boom, the board of Blockbuster rejected an offer to buy Netflix for $50 million citing that “it was losing money”.

Today, Netflix has revenues approaching $7 billion, it employs a workforce of 3,500, has 83 million subscribers, a market value of around $33 billion and “intend to generate material global profits from 2017 onwards”.

How different the Blockbuster story could have been if they understood the strength of their brand, the weakness of their proposition in the emerging IoT space and most importantly, had the vision and courage to embrace change and invest in nurturing it so that it remained relevant