At RSR, we talk a lot about Retail Winners and laggards. Our definition is pretty straightforward – Winners’ comparable sales exceed inflation, laggards’ comparable sales are below the inflation rate. Sometimes our research paints a picture of laggards in a hopeless spiral they seemingly cannot escape.

But companies like Netflix show that victory can indeed be snatched from defeat, and the seemingly powerless can become powerful. Winning is never an accident, and laggards can indeed leapfrog Winners.

It wasn’t long ago that Netflix was given up for dead. A series of strategic and tactical blunders in 2011 led a customer revolt. The company split its DVD and streaming services, temporarily renaming the DVD service “Qwickster. ” This caused consumer irritation and inconvenience (two plans, two bills, two of everything for no apparent reason). Within a month, that experiment was canceled, and while the company did keep two separate plans for streaming content vs. DVD delivery, it also moved on to acquiring and generating its own content.

The rest is history. “Orange is the New Black ” has won awards of all sorts, “House of Cards ” is dark, but interesting, and “Lilyhammer ” is a little-known gem that really must be seen: Think “The Sopranos Goes to Norway. ” I stumbled upon it on a rainy afternoon and was immediately hooked. If you want to go on a somewhat lighthearted binge watch, Lilyhammer is the show for you. (I know there are more original shows – these are just my fan-faves. You’ll each have your own.)

There are many David and Goliath stories buried in the Netflix success story – and the Goliath in question turns out to be Comcast. The most recent battle was Comcast’s attempt to buy Time Warner Cable. Even though Comcast also owns NBC (more about this shortly), this battle was less about content than it was about near monopolistic ownership of the internet backbone. As you all know by now, that deal is dead.

I read a great op-ed piece on the subject this weekend on Quartz. As an aside, if you don’t get Quartz’s daily newsletter, you really ought to re-think it. It’s one of my favorite news aggregator/blogs. Saturday’s piece talks about how Netflix CEO Reed Hastings fought the Comcast deal while avoiding lobbyists and financial pressures. Instead he focused on the consumer, and the real dislike (the op-ed piece used stronger language) consumers have for Comcast. It was a perfect storm of consumer discontent, and for once, the forces in Washington DC listened.

On the content front, Netflix is also kicking Comcast’s butt. A scathing story of Comcast’s handling of the NBC News division appeared in this month’s Vanity Fair. Now granted, Netflix is not in the news business, but even that simple fact highlights an interesting trait of winners – they stick to their knitting and make incremental changes rather than attempting to boil the ocean.

So while Comcast is attempting to run a TV network and a movie studio and content machine 24/7 (NBC is now called NBCUniversal since Universal Studios is part of the mix), Netflix introduces new content seasonally, and focuses on unusual but strong story-lines. It’s a great opportunity for content producers too, who don’t have to fight other shows for “air time ” on traditional TV.

This game is far from over. Comcast, Time Warner, AT&T and precious few others do control the internet backbone in the US, and while for now Net Neutrality is the law of the land, the financial resources of the large internet providers will continue to drive challenges to the law, funnel PAC money into the hands of lawmakers, and continue the fight to charge services like Netflix for streaming speed.

But in the meanwhile, there’s a really important lesson to learn from Netflix. Given up for dead, and following a series of disastrous missteps, the company has turned itself around, making customers and Wall Street happy.

Contrast that story to its seemingly larger and deeper entrenched competitor Blockbuster. That company is now in the dustbin of history, mostly due to a lack of nimbleness. The lesson of Netflix is that a focused, determined strategy and a willingness to admit and reverse mistakes can help a company leapfrog the competition. Retail laggards, you can do it to!