Case

Netflix

According to van Es (2023), Netflix long promoted its recommender system and data-led production as all-knowing, then gradually acknowledged the role of human expertise and creativity; the paper describes the company repositioning itself from a technology company to an entertainment company. Gomez-Uribe and Hunt (2016) describe the recommender system and its role in how users choose content. Lesson: data and judgement are not opposites. The figure that 80% of viewing comes from recommendations is cited by van Es from Gomez-Uribe and Hunt.

Industry
Streaming media
Frameworks applied
Data-driven decision cycleWhere numbers go wrong
Clipboard with a glass checklist panel, icon for consulting

Frameworks applied

This case is read through the frameworks below.

  • Data-driven decision cycleWhen a manager must show that a programme or team's work is paying off, how should they frame questions, gather data and report so each round of decisions improves?
  • Where numbers go wrongWhen a manager is handed a report or chart to base a decision on, what should they check in the data, its selection, presentation and interpretation before trusting it?

Sources

References

Listed A–Z by author surname, Harvard style. A source with a DOI links to https://doi.org/…; one without links to its page or says plainly that it has no DOI.

  1. Gomez-Uribe, C.A. and Hunt, N. (2016) ‘The Netflix recommender system’, ACM Transactions on Management Information Systems, 6(4), pp. 1–19.doi:10.1145/2843948Source page
  2. van Es, K. (2023) ‘Netflix & big data: the strategic ambivalence of an entertainment company’, Television & New Media, 24(6), pp. 656–672.doi:10.1177/15274764221125745Source page