Innovation Tactics

Develop innovation ideas you can be proud of

Economies of Scale: what you can learn from Netflix about scaling up

The concept of economies of scale can be one of the most valuable ingredients to bringing down your cost structure as you scale up your innovation idea.

Economies of scale are an accepted concept that makes common sense – so, why bother writing anything about it?

Because the journey of scaling up (and benefiting from economies of scale) will, in reality, be very different from what you learn in the economics textbook. Today, I am going to use Netflix as an in-depth, real-life example to demonstrate the challenges on their innovation journey as they have grown over the years.

You will also learn how Netflix transformed from a DVD-mailing company to an envied tech powerhouse.

Check out their exciting journey …

Best of 2018: How to develop your innovation idea

Dear innovator,

2018 was yet another fascinating year. I am getting many questions (and positive feedback) on a daily basis. I decided to make your most common questions the highlight of the year.

Most questions revolve around how you should go on about their innovation ideas. Many of you already have an idea/concept while others have founded a start-up based on their idea.

In my responses, I typically refer back to certain sections of my previous articles. So, why not do the same for everybody’s benefit? To be as specific as possible I have added direct links to the most appropriate section of the respective article rather than a wholesale link to an entire article.

Amazon Business Model: the Ultimate Overview

I have covered Amazon’s business model in 8 long reports. Now, it’s time for the ultimate summary (with lots of previously unreleased content on top). This is what we are going to look at today:

Online retail
– Fulfilment and delivery network
– Shopping experience
– Customer value proposition
Amazon devices: gateways to magic worlds
– Kindle
– Fire Tablet, Phone
– Fire TV and Prime Video
– Echo, Alexa and AI
– Business models: Kindle, Prime Video, Alexa
Amazon Web Services
Amazon Prime
Fundamental business model principles

As always, we are going to look behind the scenes to understand their business models, the economics, the strategies and what we can learn from it.

Amazon Business Model: Amazon Web Services

Amazon Web Services has become one of Amazon’s most significant offerings and business models. Netflix, a remarkable innovator in its own right, is fully hosted on AWS. Considering Netflix consumes 15% of global internet bandwidth as reported recently this shows the remarkable capabilities of AWS.

It is an almost impossible task to try write about Amazon Web Services (AWS) without being either unbelievable shallow or unbelievably geeky. The breadth and depth of AWS’s functionality is so extensive that even it experts start specialising on certain elements. As always, after a brief technical overview, I am going to focus on the business model aspects of AWS.

Amazon business model: Alexa, Echo

“Alexa, play Grand Tour!” If you always wanted to bark commands at someone without getting an angry response back, you might just love Alexa. Alexa is the smart assistant behind Amazon’s smart speaker Echo. But there are better reasons to use voice-controlled smart assistants than barking commands.

Amazon’s Alexa is similar to their the Kindle platform and the Prime Video platform in some respects and very different in other ones. And it is also different to Apple’s Siri and Google’s smart assistant.

Join me today to a tour through one of Amazon’s biggest bets and one that promises to change how humans interact with machines.

Platform Business Model

One of the biggest innovation opportunities right now is the revolutionary platform business model (click here for an overview) that fuels Uber, Airbnb, Facebook, Google, ... a great opportunity for start-ups and established companies.

Innovate like Uber & Airbnb

Get a knowledge burst on sharing platform business models (click here) with ebooks & infographics
sharing platform business model

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