Disney’s Bob Iger: How acquisitions become an ecosystem, part 1
Masters of Scale
WaitWhat
4.6 • 4.4K Ratings
🗓️ 2 March 2021
⏱️ 45 minutes
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Summary
For any distinctive brand or business, it can be a challenge to expand reach without diluting what makes you special. No one has a keener understanding of this issue than Bob Iger, executive chair and former CEO of the Walt Disney Company. In this special two-part episode, Iger takes us through how he supercharged the House of Mouse while acquiring Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, and 21st Century Fox. The trick, he explains, is setting up a diverse ecosystem that preserves the culture, methods, and core talent of both old parts and new parts – and fitting them together in ways that make everyone more successful.
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Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | Hi, it's Bob Safian. You've been hearing me as the host of rapid response in this feed for a few years now, |
| 0:07.8 | with short newsy interviews alongside the deeper dives of Masters of Scale. Well, I'm excited to share that rapid response is expanding into its own feed. |
| 0:17.0 | We'll be putting out shows twice a week, focusing on the urgent issues that business leaders are dealing with in real time. |
| 0:24.7 | So search for rapid response in your podcast player and subscribe to make sure you get all our episodes. |
| 0:31.2 | I'll see you on the other side. |
| 0:34.0 | We had 10 years of rough stuff. |
| 0:38.0 | Just happened. |
| 0:41.0 | And one could look back and try to figure out why. |
| 0:46.0 | There's no sense doing that today. |
| 0:48.0 | There's no value in it. |
| 0:50.0 | But I had to fix it and fix it fast. |
| 0:56.0 | That's Bob Eiger and the we he refers to as the Walt Disney Company. |
| 1:01.0 | Since its founding in 1923, Disney has presided over not one, but two golden ages of |
| 1:06.2 | animation from Cinderella to the Lion King. |
| 1:09.8 | But in the early 2000s, computer-generated animation threatened to overtake Disney's classic hand-drawn |
| 1:15.4 | style. |
| 1:16.4 | Leading the charge was Steve Jobs Pixar. |
| 1:20.6 | You just have to look at a Pixar film, you see what technology has done to the quality of those films. |
| 1:25.0 | There was a sense of urgency, so in my first board meeting as CEO, I said to the board, the first thing I have to do is fix Disney animation. |
| 1:38.0 | Turn that into high quality branded content account. |
| 1:41.0 | And when I laid out the best way to do it, all paths led to Pixar. |
| 1:47.0 | Bob was Disney's brand new CEO replacing the legendary Michael Eisner. |
... |
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