Ch. 2 Strategic Decision Making{0}
In Eliot Van Buskirk’s article, “$1million Netflix prize to be awarded soon,” Buskirk shines the spotlight on the a contest that software engineers and mathematicians have been competing in for the last 3 years that involves Netflix awarding the winner 1 million dollars. The contestants goal in the competition is to develop a movie recommendation system that will improve the current system in place by 10 percent. As it stands, two teams are in the run for first prize with Bellkor’s Pragmatic Chaos taking the early lead by developing a 10.05 percent improvement of Netflix’s system in June. Netflix then allowed a 30 day window in order for the other teams to catch up. The Ensemble was able to do so by creating a 10.10 percent improvement within the window frame which was better than Bellkor’s Pragmatic Chaos of now 10.09 percent(Van Buskirk, 2009).
The contest Netflix issued to the public was a very successful idea in order to involve many minds and also give them full incentive to succeed by issuing out a 1 million dollar prize to the winner. The business process reengineering Netflix is conducting to the recommendation system in the end will make their current system faster and convenient for its customers. The recommendation system of Netflix is a key aspect to their business as a means to providing superior service to its customers. The winner Netflix chooses will be the system that has met certain criteria and tests that Netflix will discuss come September 21, 2009 when the winner is announced to receive their 1 million dollar prize.
Van Buskirk, E. (2009). $1 million Netflix prize to be awarded soon. Retrieved September 2, 2009, from CNN Technology
Web:http://www.cnn.com/2009/TECH/09/02/netflix.prize/index.html