We know that high tech digital companies, such as Amazon and Google, are positioning themselves to enter the healthcare market. Therefore, it is useful to to get a handle on how companies such as these think about their digital platforms.
Here’s a good starting point. Take a look at Netflix’s paper, The Netflix Recommender System: Algorithms, Business Value, and Innovation published in 2016 in the journal ACM Transactions on Management Systems.
It is 19 pages long, with a fair amount of detail in how Netflix uses A/B testing and machine learning to develop algorithms for presenting movie selection.
At first glance, the amount of testing they do seems overwhelming. It is.
But I suggest when reading this paper you look deeper at what’s really behind this – the organization’s digital culture and digital language.
The one thing that jumped out to me is how Netflix sees its digital platform as something always dynamic – something that will always be changing – all in an effort to improve the customers experience.
Think carefully about this.
Most healthcare organizations see their website and something static – something that was done several years ago – and the less change, the better. They see their website as strictly an expense – necessary, but once it’s working, the less with mucking with it, the better.
Netflix ( and its high tech, much bigger brothers ) see their websites as constantly in a state of flux, and as the key driver of their revenue.
Now, undoubtedly the natural response is Amazon and Netflix can afford to see their websites as dynamic because they are multi-billion dollar companies.
Maybe, but I would suggest the mirrored statement is equally true – they are multi-billion dollar companies because they see their website as dynamic.