That question does not have a simple answer. A disruptive piece of content can go head-to-head with a behemoth like Marco Polo with just 1% or 2% of the production budget. When this type of disruption shows up, it forces the incumbents to double and triple down on what they already do best. And in many cases, the thing that they do best is just cost a whole lot of money. The Great Northeast MigrationĬlayton Christensen, godfather of classic disruption theory, devotes a lot of ink to this phenomenon in a chapter entitled “What goes up, cannot come down.”Ĭhristensen shows how the internal incentive structures at BigCos tend to bias all decision-making in one direction: bigger, faster, more expensive. That is where they are able to compete most effectively. He calls this the “Great Northeast Migration.” Up, and to the right. In our example, the incumbent product Marco Polo spent at least 100x (my napkin math) per minute of screen time compared to the challenger, VGHS. I am not 100x more likely to select the expensive show from my program guide.īut that increased sticker price did not, and cannot, deliver 100x the value. And it can’t capture 100x of my personal attention.ĭon’t get me wrong: I enjoy watching lavish, expensive television dramas. But I also enjoy watching competently-produced content with innovative premises, interesting characters, compelling storylines, and-something most prestige shows keep forgetting about-genuine humor. This Northwest Migration is, in effect, what Matthew Ball has dubbed the Death Star Strategy. As incumbents retreat ever further upmarket, they eventually balkanize themselves in high-end luxury pigeonholes.

That might still be a great place to live if you are an individual working within the studio system. You can harvest more social capital from your proximity to big, expensive projects. They’re not called “prestige” drama for nothing.īut what is good for individual producers and execs is not necessarily good for their companies’ long-term health. And these incentive structures are the exact levers that disruptors like to pull. If you're not disrupting incentive structures, you're not really Disrupting anything.

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