The Innovative Seller

1Innovation Isn't Hard, Breaking Old Habits Is

EVERY DAY WE see the success stories of visionaries who see a big trend, do something about it, and it completely changes the way we live. These people appear to have seen something that everyone else missed. Then we see the other side, where companies stick with the status quo as their businesses are slowly eroded by shifts in consumer behavior. Years later, it is easy to look back and wonder how so many companies missed that boat one way or the other.

Shellye Archambeau—who was on my podcast in 2021 and currently serves on the boards of several prominent companies, including Verizon, Nordstrom, Roper Technologies, and Okta—told a story about a company some of you may know, Blockbuster, and another company we all know, Netflix. Shellye was the president of Blockbuster's e-commerce division in 1999, and she and the CEO at the time met with a young entrepreneur, Reed Hastings, in 2000. This former Peace Corps member and Stanford grad came to Blockbuster with an idea. Netflix had already launched their mail delivery DVD service and had some initial traction. Blockbuster was still the big player in the movie rental business, with their extensive web of branches that accounted for over 9,000 stores globally with declared revenue of around $5.9 billion in 2004. His idea was simple: you have all these people coming to stores to rent. What if they could access movies in their homes without coming to the location? Reed proposed a simple ...