Session Spotlight

Renovate to Innovate: The importance of renovation in the process of innovation

Renovating old buildings and homes are commonplace, but why is technological renovation often overlooked? Incremental improvements help, until they don't. Just like a big home renovation adds to the quality of life, architectural renovation, when well executed, has an outsized impact on the pace of innovation. If this sounds like common sense, why is technological renovation frequently neglected or poorly executed? This talk is aimed at tackling these questions and more. In this talk, I share the common hurdles to tech renovation and how to overcome them. I take a first principles approach to defining good architecture and share my learnings on gracefully outgrowing technology and architectural choices, based on my experience scaling payment orchestration at Netflix to 250M members and preparing for the next 250M. You'll leave this talk equipped with cognitive frameworks for recognizing technological renovation opportunities and strategies for navigating a ground-up architectural revamp while unlocking innovation to drive business value. While good strategies and technical excellence are necessary, they are often not sufficient. I wrap up my talk by sharing the aspects of Netflix culture that are table stakes for the success of big cross functional and architecture oriented projects.