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Dynamic Corporate Transformation

Case Studies

Sixteen real decisions behind Volume II, told from the published record.

Every chapter of Volume II carries an In Practice case: a real organization that took a decision of the chapter's kind, told from its published record. Each case sets out the decision, the method, the result and what it took to make it work, then what Meridian, the book's case company, takes from it and four questions for a board.

The cards give a preview. The full two-page case is in the chapter, after its Worked Example and before its AXIOM Lab.

16 organizations · 15 sectors · 4 Franz Edelman Awards · 1 INFORMS Wagner Prize

1 of 16 cases

  1. Chapter 13Multi-Objective and Intelligent Enterprise Optimization
    Machine Learning for Enterprise Transformation
    Netflix

    Netflix Pays a Million Dollars for Ten Percent

    A 10.06 percent improvement, after almost three years

    Media & technologyWeek 13

    In 2006 Netflix offered $1 million to anyone who could make its rating predictions 10 percent more accurate. Almost three years and more than 40,000 teams later, two coalitions finished in a dead heat, tied at the four decimal places the rules used. The winning blend of hundreds of models never went into production: the extra accuracy did not justify the engineering. Netflix still called the prize “a great return on investment.” When is a better prediction worth paying for?

Company and organization names identify the organizations whose published decisions the cases discuss. They are trademarks of their respective owners; no affiliation with or endorsement by them is implied.