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• Case | HBS Case Collection | March 2017 (Revised March 2018)

  Reawakening the Magic: Bob Iger and the Walt Disney Company

  David Collis and Ashley Hartman

  Mickey Mouse, Snow White, and Buzz Lightyear strolled down Main Street at the grand opening of Hong Kong Disney in the Fall of 2005, pausing to snap selfies with enthusiastic children in their Mickey Mouse ears. Bob Iger, newly appointed CEO of The Walt Disney Company proudly watched the parade go by, but concerned for the future of the global corporation, he turned to colleagues and asked, “How many characters in this parade were created by Disney in the last ten years?” There was one. But the languishing Disney animation department was not the company’s only problem. Disney was under pressure: the company had recently delivered poor financial results; ratings at the ABC network had fallen below competitors; Walt’s nephew, Roy E. Disney, had stepped down from the Board after expressing his displeasure with the direction of the company under Iger’s predecessor, Michael Eisner; and Comcast had made a $54 billion hostile bid to take over Disney only one year before. The situation for Disney looked bleak.
  Yet by December 2015 the tide had turned (Exhibit 1). The much-anticipated Star Wars: The Force Awakens was set to become the highest grossing film ever in the U.S. and earn over $2 billion worldwide. Frozen had just surpassed $1 billion in box office to become Disney animation’s biggest success ever. In live action movies, Disney franchises, like Pirates of the Caribbean and Marvel’s Iron Man, had produced multiple blockbuster hits. ESPN, ABC and other cable and broadcast properties were producing record profits. Attendance was up at Disney parks and cruise ships, while the Shanghai Disney Resort, the company’s third and largest theme park in Asia, was scheduled to open in June 2016. Iger thought back to the Hong Kong Disney parade, reflecting on how far the company had come and the lessons he had learned about reawakening the Disney magic.

  Keywords: strategy; franchise management; brand management; culture change; business units; acquisition strategy; technological change; Disney; ESPN; cord-cutting; media; Bob Iger; Strategy; Corporate Strategy; Competitive Advantage; Diversification; Integration; Media and Broadcasting Industry; Entertainment and Recreation Industry; Consumer Products Industry;

  Citation:

  Collis, David, and Ashley Hartman. "Reawakening the Magic: Bob Iger and the Walt Disney Company." Harvard Business School Case 717-483, March 2017. (Revised March 2018.)  View Details

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• Chapter | Business Groups in the West: Origins, Evolution, and Resilience | 2018

  The United States in Contemporary Perspectives: Evolving Forms, Strategy, and Performance

  David J. Collis, Bharat Anand and J. Yo-Jud Cheng

  BOOK ABSTRACT: In spite of surging interest in the business group organization among business scholars, economists, and historians in recent years, academic research on business groups has, to date, remained within the boundary of emerging markets. The major aim of this volume is to explore the long-term evolution of different varieties of large enterprises in today's developed economies in the West. More specifically, the volume focuses on the economic institution of the business group and aims at understanding the factors behind its rise, growth, resilience, and/or fall; its behavioral and organizational characteristics; and its contributions to national economic development. While business groups, especially those with widely diversified product portfolios, are a dominant and critical enterprise model in emerging and developing economies and have lately attracted much attention in academic circles and business presses, interestingly, their counterparts in developed economies have not been systematically examined. This contempt for business groups in mature market settings stands in sharp contrast to the intensive research that has been conducted on other major models of large modern enterprises in those economies, such as functionally organized firms with a clear product focus and multidivisional enterprises that have diversified into related product lines. The present book aims to fill in this gap in the literature by adopting a coherent approach to this elusive subject.

  Citation:

  Collis, David J., Bharat Anand, and J. Yo-Jud Cheng. "The United States in Contemporary Perspectives: Evolving Forms, Strategy, and Performance." Chap. 15 in Business Groups in the West: Origins, Evolution, and Resilience, edited by Asli M. Colpan and Takashi Hikino. New York: Oxford University Press, 2018.  View Details

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• Case | HBS Case Collection | November 2017

  Irene Rosenfeld at Mondelēz International: Crafting a Corporate Strategy

  Raffaella Sadun, David J. Collis, Amram Migdal and Kerry Herman

  The case focuses on Irene Rosenfeld’s tenure as CEO of the global snack food company Mondelēz International. Beginning in 2006, she had led the company through many acquisitions, including France’s LU Biscuit and British confectionery company Cadbury, before, in 2012, boldly splitting the company into two: Kraft, a North American grocery business, and Mondelēz International, a global snack food company.

  Keywords: snack food; snack; global snacking; packaged food; consumer packaged; Kraft foods; Kraft; Agribusiness; Change; Change Management; Corporate Strategy; Transformation; Geography; Geographic Scope; Global Strategy; Leadership; Leadership Style; Leading Change; Management; Business or Company Management; Growth and Development Strategy; Management Style; Marketing; Brands and Branding; Demand and Consumers; Consumer Behavior; Organizational Change and Adaptation; Planning; Strategic Planning; Strategy; Food and Beverage Industry; Illinois;

  Citation:

  Sadun, Raffaella, David J. Collis, Amram Migdal, and Kerry Herman. "Irene Rosenfeld at Mondelēz International: Crafting a Corporate Strategy." Harvard Business School Case 718-403, November 2017.  View Details

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