NetFlix (BSSE, Tuesday, Week 8)
building-and-sustaining-successful-enterprisesyear-twoRemember, jobs-to-be-done are universal and timeless. Whatever NetFlix is doing for its customers is a job that George Washington had (so it's not "send them movies.").
It's probably something like "What can we do tonight (at home)?" or "Help me know what I want to do."
Our understanding of the job may increase (we may develop ingenious recommendation algorithms) and the experiences associated with the job may evolve, but the core job doesn't change.
Where the profit goes:
Pipes/mail/physical location gets commoditized => "Help me learn what I want to do!" gets de-commoditized.
If modularity happens in one step in value chain, profits just shift elsewhere...
Henry Ford on why he frequently upgraded the machinery on his production line (apocryphal, via Clay):
"If I don't buy the newest machines all the time, I'll wind up paying the full cost anyway due to lower production volume AND I won't have new machines."
After some research, I think the real quote --- basically a manager's critique of the base-case fallacy in financial analysis --- might be:
"If a man thinks that his money will earn 5 percent, or 6 percent, he ought to place it where he can get that return, but money placed in a business is not a charge on the business --- or, rather, should not be. It ceases to be money and becomes, or should become, an engine of production, and it is therefore worth what it produces --- and not a fixed sum according to some scale that has no bearing upon the particular business in which the money has been placed."