A picture of me standing at a lectern, working on a laptop computer, on the stage of the FWD50 digital government conference

Hi! I’m Alistair. I write surprisingly useful books, run unexpectedly interesting events, & build things humans need for the future.

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Tag: netflix

  • The perils of local maxima

    Preamble: It’s been nearly two years since I wrote something here. In that time, I’ve worked with a dozen or so big public companies trying to understand how to balance keep-the-lights-on, milk-the-cash-cow marketing with the pursuit of disruptive innovations. I’m trying to assemble these thoughts into something—maybe a book, maybe an online course, maybe a […]

  • Tomorrow is not like yesterday, only more so

    Here is the thing about the future. Every time you look at, it changes, because you looked at it, and that changes everything else. Cris Johnson (Nicholas Cage) in Next (2007) Most companies’ innovation is focused on sustaining the current business model—doing what Sergio Zyman calls “selling more things to more people for more money […]

  • Breather, real estate, and the Innovator’s Dilemma

    As a quick note, I’m going to be conducting a number of these interviews in the coming months. Some of them may find their way into a book as case studies. I’ve already got a few with executives at big companies. But most of them won’t be posted on the blog, and you’ll need to […]

  • One list to rule them all

    Startupfest’s Pamela Perotti asked for my thoughts on this great Forbes piece by Lightspeed’s Barry Eggers about using Big Data to build top ten lists that actually matter. First: it’s an excellent post. You should read it. I’ll wait. Every enterprise decision-maker will soon be running their business according to the lists Barry envisions, as the […]

  • Why Google could Blockbuster Netflix

    Why isn’t Blockbuster Netflix? Because it had an outdated mental model of its business. Here’s why Google could do the same thing to Netflix.

  • Policing the mental genome

    Can movie tastes predict we’re killers? Is no alibi the same as guilt? A connected life changes the legal system in scary ways.