Here is an excerpt from an article written by Todd Zenger for Harvard Business Review and the HBR Blog Network. To read the complete article, check out the wealth of free resources, and sign up for a subscription to HBR email alerts, please click here.
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In a recent interview, <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jeffrey_Katzenberg”>Jeffrey Katzenberg</a> described his first day at Disney as the newly appointed head of The Walt Disney Studios. The equally new Disney CEO, <a href=”http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Michael_Eisner”>Michael Eisner</a>, gave him a simple, unambiguous mandate: fix animation at Disney.
Although a veteran in the film business, Katzenberg had no experience with animation and little appetite for it. Disney long-timers, however, informed him that Walt Disney had left extensive notes and audio recordings concerning his experiences making animation, which were stored in the Disney archives.
Looking through these records, he discovered that Walt had effectively “left the recipe for making a Disney animated movie.” Katzenberg proceeded to apply this recipe with remarkable success, adding on the way some extra ingredients of his own.
Walt Disney, however, left another, arguably even more valuable, recipe for his company. This was a strategic recipe or what I call a corporate theory of sustained growth. This corporate theory is largely captured in the adjacent drawing also from the Disney archives, published in 1957. It depicts a central film asset that in very precise ways infuses value into and is in turn supported by an array of related entertainment assets.
<a href=”http://bobmorris.biz/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Disney-Map-Recipe.jpeg”><img class=”aligncenter size-medium wp-image-21752″ src=”http://bobmorris.biz/wp-content/uploads/2013/06/Disney-Map-Recipe-300×262.jpeg” alt=”Disney Map (Recipe)” width=”300″ height=”262″ /></a>
The map has, of course, evolved over the ensuing years as additional assets have accumulated (in fact, there are evolving depictions of this Disney synergy map in the archives). While drawing such a map today would require more boxes and more arrows, (and perhaps an independent web of interconnected assets surrounding the ESPN franchise), the fundamental patterns and the underlying insight and intuition would remain quite consistent. The strategic vision that Walt long ago composed has revealed a succession of strategic possibilities that have fueled a remarkable record of value creating growth.
Effective corporate theories like this provide managers with vision to navigate the surrounding strategic terrain over an extended period of time. They provide a conceptual tool and filter — one that can be repeatedly used to select, acquire, and assemble complementary bundles of assets, activities, and resources from the abundance available.
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To read the complete article, please click <a href=”http://blogs.hbr.org/cs/2013/05/what_makes_a_good_corporate_st.html?cm_mmc=email-_-newsletter-_-strategy-_-strategy062013&referral=00210&utm_source=newsletter_strategy&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=strategy062013″> here</a>.
<strong>Todd Zenger</strong> is the Robert and Barbara Frick Professor of Business Strategy at Washington University in St. Louis.