Netflix CEO Reed Hastings

Netflix used to be a company dedicated to providing it's customers with a service that no other company was offering, and that was a simple way to enjoy multiple types of entertainment. They also provided their customers with a sense of complete control over every aspect of their account and offered additional online services which were very successful in drawing in new customers. Netflix seemed like they had the movie rental business all figured out, and then some. But in July of this year, Reed Hastings and his team completely reorganized the entire structure of the company and split the movie rentals off into a whole new division under a completely different name, which will potentially cost them many of their loyal customers.

Reed Hastings and his team at Netflix have put the company in jeopardy and made a very drastic change to the way that they plan to do business, and did all this with absolutely no warning for their unsuspecting customers. This sort of blunder leads me to consider the phrase "if its not broken, don't fix it." Things seemed to be going so well for the company and now they have done something that has left them vulnerable for another company to take advantage and offer a service designed very similarly to the old Netflix at a much lower price.

I think that their biggest disadvantage now is that they have taken away that sense of ease and control by forcing customers to visit two completely different websites to do what they used to be able to do with one. In addition to unnecessarily complicating the process, they have also bumped up the price of a subscription for everyone, which is almost like adding insult to injury. If Hasting felt that the price for subscriptions needed to be increased, it would not be unreasonable to do so, he just did it in the worst possible way and even acknowledged this fact by writing a letter of apology to his customers on the Netflix blog site. I believe this uproar of complaints could have been avoided if Hastings announced what he was planning on doing with the company and if he had avoided splitting off into two companies to do the same thing that could have been accomplished with just one. Reed Hastings has made himself a villain in the business world for delivering a potentially fatal blow to a once very successful company.

Michael Lorimer


Source: http://www.forbes.com/sites/ciocentral/2011/09/20/hastingss-folly-the-netflixqwikster-quagmire/

Superheroes and Villains

 Hello! We are excited to start this blog as Illinois State University business students. We have five members on our team that will be contributing to this blog. Team 7 consists of: Ed Nemeth, Kaitlin Reichel, Michael Lorimer, Matt Minnaugh, and Ryan Luginbuhl

Team 7 is excited to learn from a variety of different leaders in the world of business. We think there is a lot of value in understanding the successes and failures of different leaders of organizations. Our attempt will be to parallel famed superheroes and villains to organizational leaders. We plan to share stories about the “Superheroes” of business who have made outstanding leadership decisions that have helped their company succeed or added immense value to their firm. In contrast, we plan to share stories of “Villains” in the business world who haven’t added value to their organization. Each story will hope to enlighten us and readers to a better understanding of who we wish to be as future leaders and how we can make a positive impact on the people around us and the world.