Walt Disney’s Corporate Strategy Chart

From 1957, this is a drawing of the synergistic strategy of Walt Disney Productions, or what Todd Zenger of Harvard Business Review calls “a corporate theory of sustained growth”.

The boxes on the chart have changed, but since the appointment of Bob Iger as CEO, Disney has seemingly doubled down on Walt’s old strategy with their increased focus on franchises.

Disney’s dominance can be boiled down very simply to one word: franchises. Or rather, an “incessant focus on franchises” in the words of former Disney CFO Jay Rasulo.

“Everything we do is about brands and franchises,” Rasulo told a group of financial analysts last September. “Ten years ago we were more like other media companies, more broad-based, big movie slate, 20 something pictures, some franchise, some not franchise. If you look at our slate strategy now, our television strategy, almost every aspect of the company, we are oriented around brands and franchises.”

Franchises are well suited to extend across multiple parts of a big business like Disney, particularly because it’s a repeating virtuous cycle: movies drive merchandise sales and theme park visits, which in turn drives interest for sequels and spin-offs, rinse, repeat, reboot.

I wonder if more tech companies could be using this strategy more effectively. Apple does pretty well; their various hardware (iPhone, iPad, Mac), software (iOS, OS X), and services (iCloud, App Store, iTunes Store) work together effectively. Microsoft rode Office & Windows for quite awhile. Google seems a bit more all over the place — for instance, it’s unclear how their self-driving car helps their search business and Google+ largely failed to connect various offerings. Facebook seems to be headed in the right direction. Twitter? Not so much, but we’ll see how they do with new leadership. Or old leadership…I discovered Walt’s chart via interim Twitter CEO Jack Dorsey.

• Apple
• Bob Iger
• business
• Disney
• Facebook
• Google
• Jack Dorsey
• Microsoft
• Todd Zenger
• Twitter
• Walt Disney

Disney is back

Some say the Disney magic is back. Hit TV shows (Hannah Montana), increased revenue from movies (Enchanted), and the acquisition of Pixar are all contributing factors, but new CEO Bob Iger is getting the most credit.

Mr Iger’s management style is said by many to have unlocked Disney’s creativity. “There was already creativity inside Disney, but Bob removed the barriers to it,” says Peter Chernin, chief operating officer of News Corporation, a rival media group. “Michael Eisner was all about his own creativity,” says Stanley Gold, a former Disney board director who led a campaign to oust Mr Eisner in 2004, referring to the way in which the former boss meddled in the detail of Disney’s parks and movies. In contrast, he says, “Bob pushes creative decisions to the people below him.”

Said it before and I’ll say it again: hire good creative people, let them do their thing, and ye shall reap the benefits. And Christ, no wonder Disney was sucking so bad:

Before Mr Iger took over, Disney had a factory-like process for animation in which a business-development team came up with ideas and allocated directors to them.

• Bob Iger
• business
• Disney