Blockbuster: Analysis of Online Content Streaming Platform

This report provides a comprehensive analysis of Blockbuster's potential online content streaming platform as a strategy for innovation and business development. It begins with an introduction to the concept and provides an overview of Blockbuster's current market position. The report then explores a creative mind map based on the Design Thinking model, outlining the stages of empathy, definition, ideation, prototyping, and testing. It delves into the innovative and technological components of online streaming, including multicasting, pseudo-streaming, and various online streaming techniques such as TVOD, SVOD, NVOD, and push VOD. The report also examines the nature of the technology, classifying it as both disruptive and sustaining innovation. Furthermore, it discusses the measurement of the effectiveness of online content streaming, focusing on customer behavior and performance metrics. Finally, it addresses potential difficulties and concludes with recommendations for Blockbuster to successfully implement an online content streaming platform to regain market share.

Running head: Innovation and Business Development 1
INNOVATION AND BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT
Student Name
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Innovation and Business Development 2
Table of Contents
Introduction.................................................................................................................................................2
Overview of Blockbuster.............................................................................................................................2
1. A creative mind map or Design Thinking model..................................................................................3
1.1 Step 1 Empathy..................................................................................................................................3
1.2 Steps 2 Define....................................................................................................................................3
1.3 Step 3 Ideate......................................................................................................................................4
1.4 Step 4 Prototype................................................................................................................................4
1.5 Step 5 test..........................................................................................................................................5
2. Innovative and technological components..........................................................................................5
2.1 Multicasting.......................................................................................................................................5
2.2 Pseudo-streaming..............................................................................................................................7
2.3 Online Streaming techniques.............................................................................................................7
2.4 The nature of the technology............................................................................................................9
3. Measurement of the effectiveness of online content streaming.......................................................10
3.1 Customers behavior measurement.................................................................................................11
3.2 There are ways to measure the performance of platform...............................................................11
4. Potential difficulty.............................................................................................................................12
Conclusion.................................................................................................................................................13
Recommendations.....................................................................................................................................13

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Introduction
Business innovation and development remains one of the elements of the business that
can create value for company's products or sustain the company in the market. Development of
technologies assists the business to remain relevant in a more dynamic business environment that
keeps on improving in terms of innovations. The business environment within Australia and
globally has been changing with many companies adopting modern technologies to help them
stir the business to the next level. In addition, innovation has turned out to be the competition
front for companies in the current movie or gaming market. Blockbuster is one company within
the movie service industry that is striving to meet the increasing demand for innovation and
development. The online content streaming platform remains one of the business innovations and
development that currently is adopted and implemented within movie or gaming industry. Online
movie streaming innovation remains the competitive platform for current business and is
promising if well implemented. The online content platform has various components that include
streaming techniques, payment plans, and technological infrastructure. Innovative thinking can
be enhanced through Design Thinking model that works from development of the idea to testing
of the idea. Another area that needs serious consideration is the development of measurement for
effectiveness of the content streaming platform. The following report explores online content
streaming platform as innovative ideas for Blockbuster.
Overview of Blockbuster
Blockbuster is one American movie service provider that offers a wide variety of movie
services and gaming services. The company has been providing movie services over its platforms
that include mails, rental shop, and movie theaters. Stiff competition has been intensified with

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several companies coming into the market to venture in movie streaming. Blockbuster is left
behind in movies technology due to its slow adoption of new innovation to movies streaming
that include online movie streaming platforms. The proposed solution for the Blockbuster is to
develop and implement an online content streaming platform that will enable the company to
provide movies services to customer globally (Blockbuster 2018).
1. A creative mind map or Design Thinking model
Design thinking model takes into account various steps involved in designing innovation
with clear social values of the design. Design thinking model follows some five stages that
include empathy, define, ideate, prototype, and test (Knct Social 2018).
1.1 Step 1 Empathy
Online streaming begins with considering human element within the innovation that
mainly focuses on the target audience. Movie market consists of a number of social categories of
people with different needs. The step, therefore, involves understanding the social need of
customers that consume movie materials. The target audience for the technology will be online
users that are willing to rent services for $1 dollar (Preston 2011).
1.2 Steps 2 Define
The define step of innovative design thinking model involves the development of mission
as guiding principle for the innovation. This step involves the definition of the areas that the
innovation is addressing and the main innovation benefit to the business. The mission statement
of the innovation is to make the business competitive both at the online platform and other

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movies selling platforms. The problem that the innovation is addressing is online movie
streaming need of the market as many customers are currently online (You Tube 2017).
1.3 Step 3 Ideate
During the third step of mind thinking model the focus on incorporating various business
ideas that can contribute to the innovation. Some of the ideas that are quite useful for building
this business innovation are online streaming, internet marketing that includes mail marketing
and mobile application marketing. These ideas are important for the competitive market that
currently require online and internet marketing of Blockbuster products and services.
Incorporation of many different ideas is important for the development of innovation that will
make the business competitive in the market (Umstead 2017).
1.4 Step 4 Prototype
The prototype stage of the mind thinking model entails demonstration of the online
movie streaming before actual implementation. This stage involves the development of a demo
tape of the business innovation that the Blockbuster will start. It is important to understand at this
stage of the mind thinking model whether the whole innovation will work in the marketplace. In
addition, the business needs to understand at this stage the reaction or response of the customers
upon implementation of the online movie platform. Customer preference for the product is
another area that needs to be considered at the prototype stage of developing mind thinking
model (Staples 2016).

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1.5 Step 5 test
Upon design of the prototype, the next stage of the mind thinking model involves testing
the platform to get the reaction and response of customers. Testing the platform will help the
business obtain feedback from customers that express their view on the new product that will be
implemented in the market. Moreover, the business needs to review feedback on the innovation
to ensures that the final stages of the development incorporate customer views. Blockbuster at
this point gets closer to users to know what needs to take charge of the products well before
deployment into the market (Steel 2015).
2. Innovative and technological components
Components of online moving streaming are based on some technologies that allow
customers to view or watch movies online from the company online platform. The technological
components of the platform can be divided into digital streaming or multicasting technologies.
Multicasting technologies are organized into server system that enables the company to cast its
products over the internet.
2.1 Multicasting
Firstly, multicast has a single server transmitting contents to many servers in a
configuration that is similar to radio station streaming. This technology involves loading contents
into the server of the company which is then broadcasted on various servers through multicast
routers. Client servers include those components that are based on the device that can also be
application programs for the company (Grant and Meadows 2009, pp.114).

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Figure 1Multicasting streaming technology component

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2.2 Pseudo-streaming
Pseudo-streaming involves downloading a movie before streaming and requires servers
that broadcast this content. This technology allows clients to play movies before and during
downloading of the movie file. A good product that has this technology is YouTube from Google
company. This content has various frames to allow display of the content whether through live
streaming or downloading. Media server receives the contents through different internet
protocols such as RTMP (Real-Time Message Protocol, an Adobe standard used by Flash
streaming), where the port used is 1935 (HTTP's is 80) (Malone 2017, pp 29–29).
Figure 2: Components of Pseudo streaming
2.3 Online Streaming techniques
Online streaming of the Blockbuster movies and games content requires various
components. Online streaming of movies and games requires an understanding of the various
type of streaming innovations and technologies

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Firstly, transition technique of video streaming enables the customer to pay for the movie
or game they want a particularly movies or videos on demand. Under this technique, transitional
video on demand (TVOD) will be used to allow consumers pay for videos or movies before they
start watching. For instance, customers pay 1 dollar before they start watching movies and
games. In addition, this technique requires customers to pay for each movie they watched under
TVOD plan. Sub categories or components under TVOD are electronic sell-through (EST) and
download to rent (DTR). EST involves purchasing movies over the platform before downloading
these contents for permanent consumption. The second category of the TVOD is DTR that
involve renting movie content for a limited period of time (Kaysen 2015).
Secondly, online movie streaming can also take the model of Subscription VOD (SVOD)
that involves charging customers depending on the time of streaming contents. For instance,
customers can be charged per day, month or year for online streaming of various movie contents
or games. The company can use this technique to develop a content plan that is grouped into
days or months. This innovation is used by many different companies and good examples
company is the closest competitors such as Amazon Video, Now TV, TVPlayer, Netflix, Hulu
Plus. Companies such as Netflix have more than 40 original movie contents by 2017. In addition,
the company needs to invest in this plan to incorporate nearly all those movies that have been
watched and new videos for more profitability (Giuffre 2014, pp 126–127).
Near video on demand (NVOD) is another category of the innovation that entails
streaming movies based pay per view plan. The program involves a multichannel system that
adds many different movie channels to give customer open forum to select the type of movie or
game they want to stream. For instance, customers can watch the trailer version of movies for a

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period of 10-20 minute without necessarily watching the whole movies. Moreover, customers
with no access to movies under this plan can also tune to the applications that are formed by
satellite connections. This plan has enables many videos on demand providers to incorporate
more than 40 channels by early the year 2002. This platform has various service platforms that
include Dish Network and DirecTV can also be used to broadcast network for movie streaming
(Baysinger 2016).
Push video on demand is another way of streaming movies where the company "pushes"
the content out to the viewer's set-top box without the viewer having requested the content. This
method of movie streaming is also called no true streaming since the viewer can stream contents
without bandwidth or connectivity that is required for streaming. Under this plan, the company
will utilize its movie streaming infrastructure by pre-loading the most popular contents. In
addition, the Blockbuster will push some content to the customer as the weekly playlist without
consumer’s preference. This allows limited choice of content that customers can stream at one
time (Patrikakis, Papaoulakis, Stefanoudaki & Nunes 2009).
2.4 The nature of the technology
The innovation that the Blockbuster will use is both disruptive and sustaining innovation.
The online content streaming platform will create a new market and at the same time sustain the
business in the market. Firstly, the content streaming platform is a sustaining innovation as it
seeks to sustain the Blockbuster products in the movie market that is currently dominant in the
market. For the Blockbuster to compete with other companies in the movies market, the business
has to implement a sustaining innovation (Lowensohn 2008). This online content streaming
platform has been developed and implemented by many different companies and hence good

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marketing performance. Moreover, the innovation has a high projection of ensuring the
Blockbuster remains in the market despite many new companies coming into the market (Glen
2010).
Secondly, the online content streaming platform is also disruptive innovation that will
introduce a new market for the business. The business through this new innovation takes into
account new market strategy to create new value network for the company (Saylor 2012, p. 86).
The innovation intends to disrupt market through the introduction of new products line for the
company. Online content streaming platform introduces an online market for various movies,
gaming products for Blockbuster. Moreover, the online streaming platform also serves to create a
wide value network for movies that will change the operation of the company. This has a high
probability of increasing market share for the company within America and globally.
Blockbuster will have a new market for the new product that includes the online streaming
platform (Kellner 2013).
3. Measurement of effectiveness of online content streaming
There are two main ways to measure the effectiveness of the movie streaming platform
for the company and this is based on measuring various pay plans and measuring performance of
the platform. Measuring pay plan involves measuring customer based behaviors across the
platform and their subscription preference. The second platform is measuring the performance of
the platform based on video quality and infrastructure performance.

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3.1 Customers behavior measurement
There are many different ways to measure the effectiveness of the online content
streaming platform based on subscription or behavior. Firstly, the time period that customers
take to watch show is one way to measure effectiveness. Attention span and drop-off rates is
metrics that is used to determines the period of time that customers take watching movie
contents. Secondly, the number of views will also be used to measure effectiveness of the
platform. Click through rates is one way that help determines the number of users that view
movie or some contents (Gonçalves, Costa & Couto 2016). Thirdly, customer rating and
satisfaction comments will give feedback necessary for measuring effectiveness. The platform
has comment section that allows customers to comment and express their view. Fourthly,
conversion rate that determines the number of people view contents to the number payment or
subscriptions received for a period of time (Oleg 2017). Demographic information is used to
measure the customer behaviors based on income and is used to determine the payment plans for
the customer. Lastly, Bounce rate is another way of measuring the effectiveness of the online
content streaming that determines the number of view without payment, rent or subscription.
Bouncing rate is also important determination of the client preference that forms part of client
satisfaction data (Croushore 2011, pp. 72-100).
3.2 There are ways to measure the performance of platform
Measuring performance of the platform in terms of video quality and streaming quality of
the platform. Buffer Fill is a metrics that determines the waiting time before the content start
playing. Bit rate measures the quality of video contents broadcasted on the platform. Moreover,
bit rate measure the rate of bits transmitted over a period of time from the company’s server to