Author: Sofija Mijalkovic

The streaming and cinema industries are about to undergo significant changes.

Here are my predictions about what comes next:

Cinema will decline even faster

The movie industry has been weakening for years with its declining box office revenues, shorter theatrical windows, fewer people going to the movies, and just people generally experiencing franchise fatigue.

Now, with Netflix controlling one of Hollywood’s oldest and biggest studios, I expect even fewer films in cinemas. Warner Bros. and Netflix have different clients. Or maybe you could say they define them differently. Warner Bros. made products for people who went to the movies, while Netflix makes products for people to stream and watch from their homes. I doubt Netflix will change their entire business strategy after buying Warner Bros. Sure, Netflix probably will release some of the movies in the cinema, especially the follow-ups that people are currently expecting (like Superwoman), but there will definitely be less movies in the cinema from now on.

Netflix prices will go up

Netflix already raises prices regularly. Add the cost of acquiring Warner Bros, plus new production, plus integration costs, plus the lack of competitors = subscription hikes are inevitable.

Netflix is the prime example how the streaming industry is loosing its freedom. Now you can only succeed if you get bought by Netflix or Disney, meaning you can’t truly succeed. These big streaming services like Netflix, Disney Plus, Prime Video, already had oligopolies on the industry, now it’s just becoming more evident. Now we can expect more ads, less possibility of sharing passwords. Basically streaming will become like cable TV.

Warner’s Classic Franchises Will Be Rebuilt for Streaming

Netflix will definitely use already established brands from Warner Bros. Meaning we will get Harry Potter, Lord of the Rings, DCU franchises redone. They will definitely also expand on Game of Thrones.

Other streaming services will merge or die

This acquisition will pressure others to either buy, get bought, or die. Other streaming services will probably make moves on their own, like Paramount currently trying to outbid Netflix and buy Warner Bros. for themselves. We’re entering the “Big Three Era” Netflix, Disney, and Amazon/Apple and everyone else becomes  niche or gets absorbed.

Your movie habits will change

Streaming was quietly becoming the default, but this acquisition sealed it.

I already feel it in my own life, I don’t go to the cinema as often, and honestly, I don’t feel like I’m missing anything. It’s easier to just watch movies and series at home on your computer instead of going out. Less and less of people yearn for that cinema experience.

 

For better or worse, the future of movies now belongs to streaming.

Freedom in business

Democracy is a political system where people have the right to choose their leaders and influence public decisions. Democracy is not just elections; it is accountability, transparency, and limits on power.

Liberty means individuals are free to make choices without coercion, as long as they don’t violate the rights of others. True liberty requires strong institutions, the rule of law, and equality before the law.

Free market is an economic system where businesses compete on equal grounds, where prices are shaped by supply and demand, and where success comes from value creation, and not political connections, monopolies, or manipulation.

Serbia has none of this.

Who is Mišković?

Miroslav Mišković is one of the most well-known Serbian businessmen, founder of Delta Holding, and for many people he symbolizes entrepreneurial success. But the truth is much more complicated.

Mišković did not rise in a competitive free market. He rose during the 1990s, a decade defined by hyperinflation, sanctions, economic collapse, and most importantly: tight collaboration between political elites and selected businessmen.

He was vice-president of the government under Slobodan Milošević, and Delta’s expansion during the ‘90s and 2000s happened in an environment where privatizations were not open, transparent, or competitive. Many companies were acquired under unclear circumstances, with state assistance, political backing, and insider advantages that no ordinary entrepreneur could ever access.

This is not free-market capitalism, merit and absolutely nothing about this fits libertarian ideals. Under libertarian principles, market success should come from innovation, risk, and value creation not from having the right connections or being positioned inside a corrupt state apparatus.

Mišković is not the cause of Serbian cronyism, but he is undeniably one of its clearest symbols.

Crony capitalism

Crony capitalism, sometimes also called simply cronyism, is a pejorative term used in political discourse to describe a situation in which businesses profit from a close relationship with state power, either through an anti-competitive regulatory environment, direct government largesse, or corruption.

The clearest example I can think of is Serbia.

At first glance Serbia looks like a capitalist society: private companies, big corporations, shopping malls, advertising, fast economic growth in some sectors.

But beneath the surface we operate under a system best described as crony capitalism , where the state selectively chooses winners, protects politically connected businessmen, and allocates opportunities based on loyalty rather than competition.

Characteristics of crony capitalism in Serbia:

• • Privatizations that favored insiders

  • Political influence over regulatory bodies

  • Unequal access to capital

  • Monopolistic practices tolerated or even encouraged

  • Public contracts given to the same circles over and over

  • A legal system that protects the powerful more than the market

This system kills innovation. It destroys honest competition. It blocks new entrepreneurs.

Crony capitalism is always a gateway to fascism.

Serbia is on its way to fascism.

All it needs now is a common enemy the government could blame for all its problems.

It’s about morals

Mišković is no longer as powerful as he once was, and he is far from the only crony businessman in Serbia. He is simply the most recognizable face of a system that rewards shortcuts over competence. I don’t hate him per se, I hate the system he is actively contributing to and expanding. Criticizing him doesn’t come from personal hatred, it comes from recognizing a pattern that keeps repeating.

The real problem is that young people entering business often admire figures like him, not because they agree with cronyism, but because they genuinely believe this is what “business success” looks like.

Many of them don’t see anything wrong with how he got rich and that is terrifying.

This mindset leads to the same conclusion every time:
“The rules don’t matter, only winning matters.”

This is how a society decays, how you loose freedom. This is why morals are not optional in business. If your only goal is to succeed, no matter what, then inevitably you end up supporting the same system Serbia suffers under now. A system where luck, connections, and corruption decide outcomes — not talent, hard work, or innovation.

Mišković didn’t “beat the market”, he beat a broken system and benefited from it. Mišković isn’t successful because of his “talent”, or “capabilities”, or “cleverness”. He got lucky and played dirty. He is not a good businessman. Put him in an actually free market and system, like the USA. I guarantee he couldn’t make it. I mean if he could, why didn’t he do it yet? With all that money and business he currently has going on, why wouldn’t he try to make it on the American market? The biggest market of all? Because he can’t and he knows he can’t.

Stop idolizing Miroslav Mišković.

Efficiency is doing a task with the least possible time, money, or energy.
Effectiveness is doing the right task in the first place.

Why Effectiveness Comes First

You can be extremely efficient and still fail if you’re working on the wrong things.

When someone optimizes the wrong task, the resources they “save” don’t matter. They’re still being spent on something that doesn’t move the goal forward. This is why effectiveness precedes efficiency.
Once you know you’re doing the right work, efficiency becomes meaningful.
And when you combine both, clear priorities and smart execution, you get real performance.

Common Failures When Efficiency Comes First

1. Teams that automate the wrong process

Many teams rush to automate tasks to “save time”, but if the task itself shouldn’t exist, the automation only locks them deeper into an unnecessary workflow. They become efficient at producing something the organization doesn’t need.

2. Managers who measure activity instead of progress

Some managers push for more reports, more meetings, and more visible “busyness.” They create teams that look efficient because they move fast and deliver many outputs, but outputs are not outcomes. A team that delivers irrelevant work on time is still failing.

3. Companies that cut costs instead of solving problems

Cost-cutting feels efficient, but it often ignores the real issue.
Companies freeze hiring, reduce training, or shrink support teams, thinking they are optimizing, when in reality, they weaken their ability to execute the work that actually matters.

4. Students who optimize study techniques without choosing the right goals

Many students focus on studying “faster”, watching summaries, or optimizing note-taking systems, but once again, if they’re learning the wrong material or avoiding the core concepts, it doesn’t matter how efficient their method is.

The Relationship Between the Two

It doesn’t matter if you’re extremely efficient, fast, don’t spend a lot of resources, it you’re doing the wrong thing. And if you’re doing the wrong thing, then you’re not really efficient in the big picture. By definition, efficiency requires minimizing the resources spent to achieve a valuable objective. If you’re doing the wrong thing, you’re wasting resources. In that way efficiency follows effectiveness and vice versa.

 

Still effectiveness must come first, first you need to do the right thing, and then improve the way you do it.

Effectiveness guides direction, efficiency improves the journey.

I attended the World Open Innovation Conference 2025. It was my first time attending any academic-business conference, let alone one centered around open innovation, a field I’m still very new to.

What surprised me most wasn’t the presentations or the structure of the conference (although those were impressive on their own). It was the people. I met researchers, managers, innovators, professors, entrepreneurs, people with decades of experience and still, everyone talked to me. Everyone made space for me. It’s rare to be in a room filled with experts and not feel small.

The highlight of this was meeting Henry Chesbrough, the father of open innovation and the central figure of the entire conference. You’d expect someone in his position to be distant or rushed, but he was the exact opposite. He asked me what I thought, how I felt, whether I understood everything, and if I was enjoying it. He treated my perspective as something that mattered, which, when you’re new, means everything.

I absolutely loved was seeing open innovation in action across such an absurdly wide range of topics. South Korea using open innovation as a tool of diplomacy. Companies using it to reshape their digital strategies. Even researchers applying it to Dungeons & Dragons. It made me realize how flexible and powerful the concept really is, how it’s more than a management idea and closer to a mindset, a way of seeing collaboration everywhere.

Overall, WOIC 2025 was an incredibly positive experience for me. It made the future feel a bit bigger, a bit more open, and a lot more exciting. And if this is what the world of innovation looks like, curious, collaborative, generous, I’m glad I stepped into it.

Change is normal. Change is needed. If you want to be someone, you need to change into that someone.

But you can’t grow into a new version of your life while remaining the old version of yourself. If you want different results, you have to become someone capable of creating them.

Change isn’t just for individuals. Everything needs to evolve: universities, companies, teams, systems. Inertia is comfortable, but it’s also deadly. Organizations collapse not because they’re attacked, but because they protect inefficient processes with the classic excuse:  “That’s how we’ve always done it.” Entire institutions defend outdated models long after they’ve stopped working, hoping tradition will compensate for stagnation.

Change is scary. It’s a fear of stepping into a future you can’t fully predict. But the alternative is worse: staying in one place while the world moves on without you. Growth requires discomfort. Innovation requires risk. Progress requires letting go of the familiar.

You need to constantly examine who you are, how you think, and how you work. Because the only thing more frightening than change is waking up one day and realizing that nothing around you changed, because you never did.

Management schools love theory more than reality. We’re told to memorize definitions, frameworks, and lists we’ll forget by next week, as if that builds real managers. Exams reward memory, not understanding. We can recite the five functions of management, but we’re never taught how to actually manage people, make decisions, or fix problems.

And it’s not just management. Most subjects follow the same pattern of empty learning. Even languages are taught like math: rules, tenses, and definitions instead of real conversation. You can’t learn to speak by reading grammar tables, just like you can’t learn leadership by repeating textbook phrases. The entire education system is obsessed with measurable outcomes, not meaningful learning.

Real knowledge comes from doing, from trying, failing, and improving, yet universities fear that chaos. It’s easier to test definitions than to test understanding. So we graduate with perfect notes and no idea how to apply them. The system doesn’t teach us to think; it teaches us to repeat.

Modern management has made a religion out of safety. Every process, decision, and idea now passes through a filter of caution. The goal is not to build something new, it’s to make sure nothing goes wrong. But without risk, there is no innovation. Playing it safe may keep companies alive, but it also keeps them irrelevant.

Innovation is born from uncertainty, from trying things that might fail. Yet managers today are trained to fear failure more than stagnation. Every idea must be justified, tested, approved, measured, until it’s no longer an idea, just paperwork.

The irony is that the greatest companies in history were built by people who ignored the rules. Now, those same companies hire managers to make sure no one else does the same.

The safest path is now the most dangerous one, it leads straight to irrelevance. A culture that kills risk kills its own future. No risk, no innovation, no improvement, irrelevance, failure. It’s that simple.

Meetings are the most accepted form of collective procrastination in modern management. Everyone knows they waste time, yet no one dares to cancel them. They exist not to solve problems but to create the illusion of control. Managers call them to feel relevant, and employees attend them to look engaged. Real work pauses so that fake work can be performed in PowerPoint.

Decisions that could take five minutes by email turn into hour-long performances of agreement. Each participant speaks just enough to sound important, while saying absolutely nothing. That’s why meetings are loved: they’re the safest place to hide from responsibility.

The modern manager’s calendar isn’t a schedule; it’s a defense mechanism. The fuller it is, the more it proves they’re “needed.” A packed schedule has become a status symbol, even if every meeting is pointless. Efficiency is preached, yet the most inefficient ritual remains sacred.

The worst part is that meetings reward performance over progress. You don’t need to do good work, you just need to look like you’re doing it.

A good meeting today isn’t one that achieves something, it’s one that ends early. And yet they keep multiplying, like an infection nobody wants to treat. Maybe the real question isn’t why meetings still exist, but what management would look like if they didn’t.

Peter Drucker’s The Effective Executive is one of those books everyone in management worships, but few actually question.

It teaches how to be efficient, focused, and decisive, but never asks why or for whom. Drucker assumes that organizations are inherently good, that being “effective” automatically means doing the right thing. But what if you’re effective at something destructive? What if the system itself is broken? His world was built on clear hierarchies and rational decisions, not the chaotic, politicized, short-term world of management today.

Drucker believes you can learn effectiveness through discipline and self-control, but that logic collapses when executives don’t even control their own purpose, shareholders and politics do. Modern managers aren’t executives; they’re bureaucrats, trapped in frameworks Drucker could never have imagined. Efficiency has replaced ethics, and productivity has replaced meaning. Drucker didn’t write a bad book, he wrote a timeless one that no longer fits its time.

I see no hope for this country anymore.

A few months ago, I believed that maybe the students would win, that the protests could finally remove this leech of an incompetent, corrupt president and bring at least a shred of order to Serbia. But nothing changed. The protests may not be officially over, but they feel dead, and the same man still sits in power, more erratic and disconnected by the day.

Serbia is officially branded as a “flawed democracy” that is undergoing democratic backsliding, according to analyses from organizations like Freedom House, but even that sounds too generous. What we truly have is a dictatorship disguised as choice: one man surrounded by loyal, unqualified lackeys who hold positions they don’t understand, while real experts are pushed aside or leave the country entirely. The result is everywhere, collapsing buildings, broken roads, failed institutions, all built by people who were never meant to build anything.

Crime goes unpunished because the guilty all “know someone,” and that someone always leads back to the same circle of power. The media are captured, the old are brainwashed, and the young are leaving. The few who stay and try to create something, small startups, independent thinkers, are crushed before they can even start. Corruption keeps its monopoly, and in doing so, ensures that innovation, like hope, cannot survive here.

By not having innovation, you are damning your country to failure. The only current sources of income for Serbia are exploiting its natural resources and selling real estate, something that should be a basic human right, not an industry. There is nothing being created here. No new products, no unique services, nothing that carries the mark of Serbian ingenuity or progress.

Unlike developed economies such as the US, the UK, or France, which thrive on innovation, technology, and global exports, Serbia feels hollow, like an imitation of an economy rather than a real one. We survive by draining what we already have instead of building something new. Our resources will run out, and our real estate bubble keeps inflating, pricing ordinary people out of their own cities. Without innovation, creation, or ownership of ideas, a country isn’t growing, it’s just waiting to collapse.