Tag Archives: digital economy strategy

Why Blockbuster’s success in Canada is a bad news story

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I noticed today in the Globe that while Blockbuster (the movie rental company) has declared bankruptcy in the United States, here in Canada the branch of the company is doing fine, indeed it is still profitable:

Blockbuster Canada vice-president and general manager Barry Guest said in a statement early Thursday that its operations are still profitable. “Blockbuster Canada operates independently of the U.S. and is financially stable,” he said.

So how can this be a bad news story?

Clues to the answer lie deeper in the article, in this paragraph:

Once a home entertainment powerhouse in the United States, Blockbuster has been losing market share and money for years as more Americans rent DVDs from subscription service Netflix Inc. and popularity surged for streaming video over the Internet.

Let’s be clear, Blockbuster in Canada is profitable not because it has been innovative. Not because it has reinvented itself in a digital era. Not because it has been visionary. Blockbuster is okay because the innovations and services that have devastated its southern partner basically aren’t available in Canada. In short, when it comes to rolling out cutting edge services (or even kind-of cutting edge services) in the digital media/infrastructure space Canada falls short.

bbcanada1This, of course, is well documented (hello cellphone contracts!) and it is the real story here! How can Canada – and Canadian companies – expect to be leaders in the digital space (I’m looking at you, forthcoming Digital Economy Strategy) if even the most mainstream services available in the US (mainstream enough to destroy an incumbent) haven’t even made it north of the border? Domestically, who are we competing with, competitors from an analog era? This is not a marketplace that is likely to produce the next Tivo, Netflix or whatever.

This story feels like a metaphor for pretty much everything that is wrong with innovation and competitiveness in this space in Canada, right down to the fact that we appear to celebrating the ongoing success of blockbuster. Sigh.

Canada's Digital Economy Strategy: Two quick actions you can take

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For those interested – or better still, up till now uninterested – in Canada’s digital economy strategy I wanted to write a quick post about some things you can do to help ensure the country moves in the right direction.

First, there are a few proposals on the digital economy strategy consultation website that could do with your vote. If you have time I encourage you to go and read them and, if swayed, to vote for them. They include:

  • Open Access to Canada’s Public Sector Information and Data – Essentially calling for open data at the federal level
  • Government Use and Participation in Open Source – A call for government to save taxpayers money by engaging with and leveraging the opportunity of open source software
  • Improved access to publicly-funded data – I’m actually on the fence on this one. I agree that data from publicly funded research should be made available, however, this is not open government data and I fear that the government will adopt this recommendation and then claim that is does “open data” as the UK and the US. This option would, in fact, be something far, far short of such a claim. Indeed, the first option above is broader and encompasses this recommendation.

Second, go read Michael Geist’s piece Opening Up Canada’s Digital Economy Strategy. It is bang on and I hope to write something shortly that builds upon it.

Finally, and this is on a completely different tack, but if you are up for “clicking your mouse for change,” please also consider joining the facebook group I recently created that encourages people to opt out of receiving the yellow pages. It gives instructions what to do and, the more people who join bigger a message it sends to Yellow Pages – and the people that advertise in them – that this wasteful medium is no longer of interest to consumers (and never gets used anyways).