The $1 Million Netflix Discovery
2006: Netflix offers $1 million prize to improve recommendations by 10%
The winning insight: Don't analyze movies. Analyze PEOPLE.
"People who liked what you liked also enjoyed..."
This single idea revolutionized recommendations. Instead of understanding why you like Attack on Titan (complex plot, dark themes, action), the algorithm finds people with similar taste patterns and recommends what they watched.
No content analysis needed. Just behavior patterns.
This is collaborative filtering—and it changed everything.