Nice analysis!
I think the effects and implications of surge go beyond UBER itself. For instance, in India, when a surge happens most of the UBER drivers tend to move away from the area. Primarily because the competitor's prices are way lower and people would just not call an UBER at all. In this case defeating the whole purpose of Surge.
Would be interesting to see other implications of Surge
Enter Captain Netflix! With the cable networks improving to compete with the online content providers (hulu, hboGo, etc), Streaming in-flight could be a Business Class feature.
Considering a movie is about 2 hrs, thats 6 GB/Movie. Say they have a "limited" library of 300 movies thats 1800 GB.
Considering a short tv show is about 20 mins, thats 1GB/ Episode. Say they have the latest 1000 episodes of all the latest shows, thats 1000 GB.
Considering a long tb show is about 40 mins, thats 2Gb/Episode. Say they have the latest 1000 episodes of all the latest shows thats 2000 GB.
This brings the total to 4800 GB, rounded up to about 5 TB. If they have complete copy of everything that's 10TB. 4 TB costs about $200 [2]. If you got 3, you spend $800. Even if you triple capacity, you're only spending $1800. Obviously there are other costs involved but I think it's definitely plausible and affordable. Probably also much cheaper to negotiate with Netflix on a per seat basis rather than content distributors separately. Only disadvantage is that you wont get "currently in theaters" movies which a lot of international airlines have.
Can you stream different HD videos to 100 passengers at once from one storage device? (I don't know much about the performance of modern storage devices.)
I know at least Virgin already has an extensive on-board digital content delivery system so there's already a provider that's done a lot more than Netflix in terms of aircraft VOD infrastructure. Plus, since the airline controls the content, they get to reap the advertising rewards.
"No problem is too small or too trivial if we can really do something about it."
This part tells us to keep solving whatever comes in our way. In today's world, most successful start-ups don't always succeed with their first idea, but rather an iteration of it.
Microsoft made a huge pivot fairly early. Apple, did a small pivot that was arguably a course correction. Nintendo did a major piviot later on. Which I think is more telling.
The odds that your first idea is perfect is small. Recognizing when you have a better option is important.
Like _craft asked, is there data that most successful companies pivot? Mentioning 2-3 successful pivots does give great insight into whether pivoting successfully is common. :)
(But as long as we're listing successful pivots, Intel is one of the most famous pivots out there.)
Would be interesting to see other implications of Surge