How do you know when it is time to expand into a new product line or market versus doubling down on your core business?

Question

Accepted Answer

Expansion is lethal when it’s ego disguised as strategy. Remember the Canada Principle? The first rule of thumb is "will the energy required to enter a new market, produce even greater benefits if applied back to the core business.".

For streaming, we had to wait until three things lined up: the core business worked repeatedly, the economics made sense, and the enabling technology was genuinely ready. For streaming, broadband penetration, device adoption, licensing realities, and customer behavior all mattered. The signal wasn’t “this is exciting,” it was “this is becoming inevitable.” Until then, DVDs were funding our future. That’s the test: expand when the new thing is real enough to matter, but not so early it starves the engine keeping you alive.

for Netflix, that took 9 years.