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Blockbuster saw Netflix coming. That’s the part people forget.
In 2006, Blockbuster launched a program called Total Access. You could rent a DVD online, and instead of waiting for the next one to show up in the mail, you’d just walk it into a store and swap it for something else on the spot. On paper, it was smart. Blockbuster had thousands of stores and Netflix had none, so why not turn that into the advantage. For a minute, it worked. Subscribers grew fast enough that Netflix actually lost customers for the first time in its history (CNBC).
Then the math caught up with them. Every time someone walked in and swapped a disc, Blockbuster ate about two dollars in cost (CNBC, em360tech). The stores that were supposed to be their edge over Netflix turned into the thing quietly bleeding them dry. They didn’t lose because they ignored the internet. They lost because they used the internet to make the store better instead of asking whether the store needed to exist at all.
I keep thinking about that distinction because I hear a version of it in almost every AI conversation happening in L&D right now.
Walk into any planning meeting this year and you’ll hear some version of the same roadmap. We’re using AI to build content faster. We’re using it to personalize what’s already in the LMS. We’re using it to shrink development time on the courses we were already going to build. All of that is real progress, and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t useful. But it’s the same move Blockbuster made. We’re using new technology to run the old model better, instead of asking whether the old model is the thing that needs to go.
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Here’s the uncomfortable parallel. Blockbuster owned movies. We own content. Blockbuster’s job was never really “rent out physical discs,” it was “get people access to something entertaining.” The disc was just the delivery mechanism they’d built their whole business around, so it felt like the product. Same with us. Our job was never “build courses” or “maintain a content library.” It’s to actually change what people can do. The course, the module, the curriculum, that’s our disc. It’s the delivery mechanism we built the business around, and it’s starting to feel a lot more optional than we’d like to admit.
If AI can already generate a working explanation, walk someone through a skill in real time, answer the exact question they have in the exact moment they have it, then the thing we’ve spent careers perfecting, the packaged content experience, stops being the differentiator. It becomes the store. And right now, a lot of us are busy renovating the store. Better checkout. Slicker interface. Maybe a subscription model so people feel like they’re getting more content for their money. All reasonable ideas. None of them touch the actual question, which is what happens when people don’t need to come into the store at all.
I don’t think this means content disappears, any more than movies disappeared when Blockbuster did. People still watch just as much, maybe more. What disappeared was the assumption that you needed a building full of shelves to get it to them. The thing that replaced Blockbuster wasn’t a better Blockbuster. It was a completely different relationship between the audience and the content, built by someone willing to design around where things were headed instead of where they’d been.
That’s the harder conversation for L&D to have, because it means our advantage might not be the library we’ve spent years building. It might be something closer to what Blockbuster actually had and never valued the way they should have: years and years of data on what engages their customers. Netflix couldn’t buy that. AI can’t fake it either. But it also doesn’t survive on its own if we spend the next two years polishing the checkout flow on a store nobody needs to walk into anymore.
Picture what that actually looks like. Just like Netflix leverages AI to build a unique “watching journey” for every single one of their customers, you can build a truly unique learning journey for your employees. So here’s the honest question I’d ask any L&D leader looking at their AI roadmap right now. Are you building a faster way to deliver what you already deliver? Or are you asking what it looks like when people don’t need what you deliver in its current form at all? Those are very different roadmaps, and only one of them survives the next five years.
Blockbuster wasn’t destroyed by not seeing the future. They saw it clearly enough to build Total Access. They just didn’t trust it enough to let go of the store. I’d hate for us to make the same trade.
The post Don’t Build a Better Blockbuster first appeared on Infopro Learning.
In 2006, Blockbuster launched a program called Total Access. You could rent a DVD online, and instead of waiting for the next one to show up in the mail, you’d just walk it into a store and swap it for something else on the spot. On paper, it was smart. Blockbuster had thousands of stores and Netflix had none, so why not turn that into the advantage. For a minute, it worked. Subscribers grew fast enough that Netflix actually lost customers for the first time in its history (CNBC).
Then the math caught up with them. Every time someone walked in and swapped a disc, Blockbuster ate about two dollars in cost (CNBC, em360tech). The stores that were supposed to be their edge over Netflix turned into the thing quietly bleeding them dry. They didn’t lose because they ignored the internet. They lost because they used the internet to make the store better instead of asking whether the store needed to exist at all.
I keep thinking about that distinction because I hear a version of it in almost every AI conversation happening in L&D right now.
Walk into any planning meeting this year and you’ll hear some version of the same roadmap. We’re using AI to build content faster. We’re using it to personalize what’s already in the LMS. We’re using it to shrink development time on the courses we were already going to build. All of that is real progress, and I’m not going to pretend it isn’t useful. But it’s the same move Blockbuster made. We’re using new technology to run the old model better, instead of asking whether the old model is the thing that needs to go.
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Here’s the uncomfortable parallel. Blockbuster owned movies. We own content. Blockbuster’s job was never really “rent out physical discs,” it was “get people access to something entertaining.” The disc was just the delivery mechanism they’d built their whole business around, so it felt like the product. Same with us. Our job was never “build courses” or “maintain a content library.” It’s to actually change what people can do. The course, the module, the curriculum, that’s our disc. It’s the delivery mechanism we built the business around, and it’s starting to feel a lot more optional than we’d like to admit.
If AI can already generate a working explanation, walk someone through a skill in real time, answer the exact question they have in the exact moment they have it, then the thing we’ve spent careers perfecting, the packaged content experience, stops being the differentiator. It becomes the store. And right now, a lot of us are busy renovating the store. Better checkout. Slicker interface. Maybe a subscription model so people feel like they’re getting more content for their money. All reasonable ideas. None of them touch the actual question, which is what happens when people don’t need to come into the store at all.
I don’t think this means content disappears, any more than movies disappeared when Blockbuster did. People still watch just as much, maybe more. What disappeared was the assumption that you needed a building full of shelves to get it to them. The thing that replaced Blockbuster wasn’t a better Blockbuster. It was a completely different relationship between the audience and the content, built by someone willing to design around where things were headed instead of where they’d been.
That’s the harder conversation for L&D to have, because it means our advantage might not be the library we’ve spent years building. It might be something closer to what Blockbuster actually had and never valued the way they should have: years and years of data on what engages their customers. Netflix couldn’t buy that. AI can’t fake it either. But it also doesn’t survive on its own if we spend the next two years polishing the checkout flow on a store nobody needs to walk into anymore.
Picture what that actually looks like. Just like Netflix leverages AI to build a unique “watching journey” for every single one of their customers, you can build a truly unique learning journey for your employees. So here’s the honest question I’d ask any L&D leader looking at their AI roadmap right now. Are you building a faster way to deliver what you already deliver? Or are you asking what it looks like when people don’t need what you deliver in its current form at all? Those are very different roadmaps, and only one of them survives the next five years.
Blockbuster wasn’t destroyed by not seeing the future. They saw it clearly enough to build Total Access. They just didn’t trust it enough to let go of the store. I’d hate for us to make the same trade.
The post Don’t Build a Better Blockbuster first appeared on Infopro Learning.