Focused
One of the key things for me to shift out of first gear is to being focused. An example is a company whose services I interact with every day.
Netflix.
Netflix is razor-sharp in its focus on delivering quality content to their consumer directly. What once started with buying and renting content from others to be a video delivery system and platform has now evolved to be a focused content creation studio powerhouse creating their own internal movies and shows for their captive audience coupled with sourced third-party content. And one can see this focus in play every day.
Unlike Netflix the content strategies of Amazon, Apple and Google seem fairly similar. They have set-top boxes (Fire TV, Apple TV, Google TV/Chromecast) where they try to be app and content consolidators. Kind of a portal or entryway. They have their own content - Amazon Originals, Apple Originals (through their TV+ service), and YouTube platform. They rent movies and TV shows. They provide access to standard TV and TV channels. Various news platforms integration - through apps and subscription to specialty TV channels. And these companies are average and me-too in what they do, by offering a plethora of services - they don’t do one thing well, but do many things poorly as a pattern.
Contrast this with Netflix that stands apart. No setup boxes. Roku which started as a division of Netflix was sold off. No portals. But yet, their services are ubiquitous on various devices and platforms. No renting of movies and shows (on top of what is available). No selling anything. No news. No advertising. No Live or on-demand TV integration. No specialty TV channels. No user-generated content. None of these. Nada. Nothing. Just pure focus on being core Netflix.
And that is something that needs to be learned from them. Iron-clad focus.
PS: It will be interesting to see how Netflix’s announced foray into games pans out - this is the first time they are attempting something outside of their core product offering. Early days and very little information so far on what this means. On my watchlist.