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The 9 Most Brilliant (and the 9 Most Disastrous) Business Moves of the Decade
From forward-thinking acquisitions to hare-brained lapses of judgment, these were the decisions that crushed the competition — and the ones that backfired horribly
This was the decade of the pivot, the unicorn, and the unicorpse. It seemed like everyone — from cosmetics retailers to pizza chains — began calling itself a tech company. Yet they do have a point: Tech has redefined everything, ushering in a business world that moves with unprecedented speed. You either disrupt or get disrupted. You’re nimble or you collapse. The bold are both rewarded and punished. Here’s a look back at some of the best and worst business moves of the decade.
The 9 Best Moves
1. Netflix rethought its business model
We’re all so used to bingeing Netflix that we might have forgotten that its CEO, Reed Hastings, made a bold (and, at the time, very unpopular) move back in 2011 to separate streaming from its DVD business. He took another big step in 2013, sending an 11-page memo to employees and investors announcing that instead of just distributing digital content, Netflix would be the maker of it. It turned out to be a…
