Francis Underwood on Iteration & Disruption

Kevin Spacey’s keynote address at the Guardian Edinburgh International Television Festival talked about the future of TV, but it was relevant to a lot of businesses.

Spacey, who stars as Congressman Francis Underwood in the Netflix original series ‘House of Cards’ — which was nominated for nine Emmys, celebrated the advantages of the Internet streaming service's viewer-empowering model, and encouraged traditional networks to give audiences more control over how they consume content.

He criticized the traditional process that dominates the US TV industry by explaining how ‘House of Cards’ was made; "We went to all the major networks with 'House of Cards,' and every single one was interested in the idea, but every single one wanted us to do a pilot first.” He explained why that didn’t make sense — in simple terms, they had a long story to tell. It would have been difficult to tell the story in a short time.

Having gotten hooked on the show, I agree. It wasn’t until episode three or four that I really started to get into it. He explained that they were creating a “sophisticated, multi-layered story with complex characters who would reveal themselves over time, and relationships that would need space to play out.” In contrast, with a pilot, you would need to spend 45 minutes writing about the characters to prove out the model. The entire process isn’t conducive to sophisticated story-telling. And, don’t we want more sophisticated TV?

In the case of ‘House of Cards,’ Netflix bought a show that didn’t exist yet. It is worth noting that the UK series was already successful, so that did reduce the risk somewhat. The alternative is lots of people spending a lot of money making pilots. Last year, 113 pilots were made. Thirty-five of those were chosen to go to air, and thirteen were renewed. Most are gone. According to Brad Adgate, research director at Horizon Media, pilots cost an average of $5 million, about double the price of a regular show. It sounds like a pretty wasteful process.

The new viewer-empowering model is a game-changer much the way agile software development contrasts with the traditional waterfall model. ‘House of Cards’ is an example for other industries — whether it is software, consumer goods, services, or TV content — there are benefits to trying or iterating as tests — in addition to analyzing scenarios.

That is: Sometimes the opportunity cost of decision analysis exceeds the benefits that could be gained by enacting some decision. Netflix has already proven that real-life iteration can disrupt an industry.

As Congressman Francis Underwood says in his mesmerizing accent, "Take a step back, look at the bigger picture, that's how you devour a whale -- one bite at a time."