The Rhythm Of Innovation: Convergence, Divergence, And Blockbuster

Forbes

01-04-2025

Person alone in a movie theater.
This week, I was searching my computer for a document when I randomly came across an old proposal I had written. It was dated March 23, 2005. The client was Blockbuster Video. Back then, we used to start every proposal with an exploration of a big idea. This one wandered far afield…
'Right now, there's a lot happening in the world of entertainment. TiVo, Netflix, and Video-on-Demand are changing the way people get access to movies and television. Advances in wireless platforms and internet services are changing how people play video games. Broadband technology promises to give people an unprecedented amount of entertainment choices on their phones, computers, and cars. Clearly, we have more ways to be entertained than ever before…
Many of these new solutions are attractive because they appeal to very different kinds of mindsets that people have about video entertainment. It turns out that renting a movie to have a good time with friends on a Friday night is just one way in which we engage with this stuff. Sometimes, we seek out an obscure title that may be a bit of a guilty pleasure. (Anybody rent "Death Race 2000" recently?) Depending on who we are, we might watch something just to keep up with what our friends are watching, like the latest season of 24. Interestingly enough, many of us have even begun to purchase movies that we never watch, building a collection of titles that are worth having just for the sake of having. We might know someone who owns a copy of The Godfather on DVD, just because they feel that no self-respecting movie buff should be without a few canonical titles. It doesn't matter that the DVD is still in its original wrapping. When a new technology succeeds, it often does so by appealing to one of these more obscure entertainment occasions. That's a far cry from fifty years ago when going to a movie on the weekend was the primary entertainment experience for a wide swath of the population.
Increasingly, then, there's a wider spectrum of ways for people to be entertained. Will it ever end? Will we soon find ourselves with a myriad of ways in which to get video content? And if some of these technologies are short-lived, which ones will succeed? The answer may lie in a pile of ancient clay pots.
Archaeologists who study the remains of long-dead civilizations often notice a pattern in the fragments of rubble they dig up. They may come across a stratum of ruins that reveals how a particular people used different kinds of pottery. If they compare these potsherds to fragments in more recent layers, they may begin to notice that the variety of pot designs gradually increases. After a time, though, that variety may start to diminish, reflecting how society started to favor two or three of the most useful pot designs. The next few layers may reveal that most of the pots are of the same two or three types. Eventually, though, people may have started to tire of these basic types and began to experiment with new pottery designs. The next few layers of ruins start to show an ever-widening variety of pots. And so it goes, with successive layers of ruins showing periods of convergence and divergence in the solutions that people choose. Archaeologists call this battleship seriation because the variety of fragments in a given series goes up and down like the profile of a superstructure on a battleship.
Remarkably, this rhythm of convergence and divergence isn't just relegated to products of the ancient world. In the early 1980s, noted British design researcher Robin Roy demonstrated how modern products can conform to battleship seriation as well. He mapped out all the bicycle varieties that had been developed since the invention of the bicycle in 1842. And he noticed the same rhythm of convergence and divergence. He could identify that the bicycle was in a period of convergence—there were two primary types of bikes at the time, the road bike and the BMX. And then he made a prediction. Based on the pattern that he observed, it seemed clear that the bicycle was poised to undergo a period of divergence, and that the 1990s would see a proliferation of different bike designs. Moreover, when things would converge again, it would be likely that either the BMX or the road bike wouldn't survive. A decade later, the proliferation of mountain bikes, hybrid bikes, cruising bikes, commuter bikes, and so on brought that divergence to life. Roy's prediction was instrumental for anyone seeking to understand the relationship between technological and cultural change. It might have been invaluable to any bike manufacturer puzzling over whether it was time to start a new platform or apply the eighty-twenty rule to their portfolio.
Mark Twain once said that history doesn't repeat itself—but it rhymes. Common sense suggests that the variety of delivery options that people have for entertainment content can't expand forever. Like the LaserDisc, many of these offerings may persist for decades yet fall out of mainstream use. The jury's still out on whether these offerings will behave like modern bicycles and ancient pottery. Nonetheless, Blockbuster can surely profit from a better understanding of why particular solutions may be more compelling, more viable, and ultimately more successful over time.
A lot has changed in the time that Americans have been going to the movies. Increasingly, a variety of solutions have become specialized to particular contexts of use, and indeed, particular mindsets. To get out ahead of this curve, Blockbuster may need to do more than just experiment with the latest technologies or track current consumer preferences. Many of these new technologies will no doubt threaten Blockbuster's existing business model. Imagine what the world might look like if everyone were simply ordering videos on demand directly to their televisions, their computers, or even their phones.
As accomplished as Blockbuster is, you're not the only kids in the sandbox. Right now, it's likely that a host of direct and analogous competitors are aiming to try and dominate the same categories that you are. To ensure sustainable success, Blockbuster may need to identify how people understand the solutions they have on an implicit level, to better predict what offerings will connect with ordinary folks, and avoid becoming a flash in the pan.'
Ahh Dev… Twenty years ago, my fascination with the obscure reaches of social science was deep. My empathy for clients was shallow. And yet, there were ideas in all of that musing that I've taken forward. The world is changing faster than ever. Useful answers exist at the margins. And identifying periods of technological divergence and convergence has proved helpful to companies on more than one occasion. Still, maybe all that is easier to understand without the potsherds. Our proposals are a lot less interesting these days. But hopefully a bit more helpful...
We didn't get the project.