“There’s rational behavior and there’s, well, other behavior,” says Peter Broderick, a film-distribution strategist who runs Paradigm Consulting. “Decision-making in Hollywood, perhaps more than anywhere else, is driven by conventional wisdom and inertia and a whole lot of things that are more complicated than just being rational.”
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The instinct to retrench and overemphasize strategies that have worked in the past is a common problem in companies as they get bigger and have more to lose, particularly as technologies change. Polaroid and BlackBerry doubled down on their time-tested formulas despite market changes, suggesting that this behavior can undermine even the most successful companies. “The more successful and larger they become, the more antibodies they develop to doing anything new,” said Alan MacCormack, a Harvard Business School professor.
Besides introducing me for the first time to the concept of endogeneity, embedded in the piece are a number of quotes worth reading while casting glances at the publishing industry, itself increasingly affectionate of the blockbuster model: http://nyti.ms/186PoWh
