No Rules Rules
A review of

No Rules Rules

Netflix and the Culture of Reinvention

Reed Hastings and Erin Meyer • Penguin Press • 2020

Radical Openness and Flexibility

by David Meyer

Reed Hastings offers a candid deep dive into Netflix’s singular and singularly successful corporate culture.

Reed Hastings co-founded Netflix in 1997, and has been its chairman and CEO since 1999. Erin Meyer wrote The Culture Map: Breaking Through the Invisible Boundaries of Global Business and is a professor at the international business school INSEAD. Together, they bring a relaxed, candid voice to a different sort of management guide. There’s no arguing with Netflix’s success, which Hastings attributes entirely to its ever-evolving culture. The tone and substance of his advice in this New York Times bestseller underscore Netflix’s uniqueness.

Hastings revels in how Netflix’s culture embraces a “no rules” approach that enables worker freedom. The humble former DVD-by-mail business of the early 2000s now produces award-winning movies and TV shows while streaming content to more than 167 million viewers. Hastings and Meyer explain how Netflix’s culture gives it a competitive ability to adapt rapidly in the evolving digital world while inspiring employee innovation, responsibility and high performance.

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