What Was Netflix's Most Disruptive Idea?

Reed Hastings says the most disruptive thing in his tenure at Netflix was on demand. Customers paid a flat fee and could watch as much as they wanted, whenever they wanted. The proposition was radical then and is taken for granted today.

The distribution side was radical: watch when you want and how you want. The creation side stayed traditional, with shows like The Diplomat and films like The Unabomber. Making streaming easy took unbelievable amounts of work. The first couple of years were hard and glitchy, then it got better until a viewer turns it on and it works. A recommendation that followed one liked title with another did not, in his view, exist in a general way. People had TV guides, and companies in the 1990s were already trying to predict which movies would be more successful.

Joining the Motion Picture Association was a big deal of acceptance, and so was winning Netflix's first Oscars and Emmys. For a large part, Netflix was not disrupting how shows get made. It made watching easier.