Current Issues Research Paper
Strategic Orientation
TiVo Inc.
12/2/2002
Michael Ramsay and James Barton originally conceived TiVo Inc. in 1997. Their company was founded with a single vision, “to create and continually enhance a new, easy – and much better – way to watch television.”1 The formation of their company has proved to be difficult because it was the first significant development to assist in the television viewing experience in twenty years. With TiVo’s continued commitment to the customer they plan to “forever change the way people view television.”1
Initially TiVo was taking off like wildfire with an unprecedented adoption rate in the history of consumer electronics. This was made possible by TiVo’s commitment to provide its viewers with a customized TV viewing experience. TiVo does this by selling a Digital Video Recorder embedded with software that uploads the users viewing habits into a database. This database then determines what types of shows each user prefers and then downloads them into the users Digital Video Recorder (DVR) so the customer can browse through the selections and determine what they want to watch.1 Based on the users preferences the shows can then be recorded onto the DVR’s hard disk and viewed whenever they have some free time. Since the information is recorded digitally the user can choose to skip over the commercials automatically or pause the program at any point to grab some snacks. This concept has come to be known as “time warping” or “time shifting.”2 The information that is retained within TiVo’s databases is then sold to advertisers so they can send the user customized commercials and mailings.
