Jumping the S-Curve

6	EDGE-CENTRIC STRATEGY

IN ITS HEYDAY, Blockbuster, Inc., certainly lived up to its name. From a single storefront in Dallas in the mid 1980s, the company quickly expanded to thousands of retail locations worldwide, displacing countless mom-and-pop operations to become the dominant force in video rentals. At one point, Blockbuster boasted 7,700 stores in North America, Europe, Asia, and Australia, and in 2002, its stock had reached a high of $30 a share. But then the company hit a wall. Sales stagnated and profits evaporated, and soon Blockbuster was struggling for its very survival. The dramatic decline wasn’t simply a case of too much, too fast. Yes, the company did expand at a fast clip, but that growth might have been manageable had it ...