How disruption can lead to innovation in how you conduct your business

When Marc Randolph and Reed Hastings launched the world's first online DVD-rental service in California in 1997, it was far from the behemoth that Netflix is today. Customers had fewer than 1,000 titles to choose from, and they had to pay separately for every DVD they rented. The founders nearly sold the company to Amazon for around US$15 million, and when they tried to sell it to Blockbuster forUS$50 million a few years later, Blockbuster's CEO was reported to have said to Netflix, "The dotcom hysteria is completely overblown." Fast forward two decades, and the company now has more than 200 million subscribers around the world and more than US$20 billion in annual revenue. The simple answer is'reinvention' – a requirement that can present itself to any business, but which not all business leaders have the courage or forethought to embrace.