In 2011 Netflix announced Qwikster, a plan to split DVD-by-mail from streaming into two separate brands. The plan was never executed — Netflix reversed it — but the announcement alone cost 800,000 subscribers in a single quarter and dropped Netflix's market cap from roughly $40B to $10B.
Gibson Biddle uses it as a cautionary counterpoint inside a talk that otherwise celebrates iterative experimentation: some commitments (public brand/product-structure announcements) can't be A/B tested or walked back cheaply, because the announcement itself is the action that damages trust, independent of whether the underlying plan was ever good. Contrast with High Integrity Commitment (HIC), which is about committing fully to bets you can still adjust in execution — Qwikster is what happens when a structural, public commitment is made before the organization (and its customers) are actually ready for it.
Из тем: Netflix, Consumer Science, and Strategy Storytelling