Kenversations™
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It seems to me that Animators and Imagineers are the core of Disney. By "Animators", I'm not being literal - I'm referring to any of the people involved in creating animation. WDFA and WDI are storytellers. They create characters and settings that captivate our hearts and imaginations. The concept people and the writers… the people who create characters, write the rules of their worlds, write dialogue, develop plots… they need to be gathered together. Whether it is a book, an interactive game, a theme park attraction, a film, a live play… all of these things need endearing characters, lasting stories, and good gags.

The inner core should focus on being good story & character developers, coming up with a "bible" for new projects.

After a good bible is put together, the company could then go about deciding which media are best to first introduce the characters, with the intention of eventually moving them into most if not all of the media the company is involved with. Feature animation, other movies, and television still seem to be the most effective way of introducing these things to the largest number of people right now, so that should be the primary target for creation. However, the core group of creative individuals shouldn't necessarily be focused on a particular medium.

Therefore, surrounding that core on this organization model should be the people who adapt - who work out the design and engineering, do the rendering, the manufacturing, the building, the producing, the recording, etc. These would be the people who take that take that bible and create theme park attractions, make movies, produce television shows, produce games, etc.

Finally, the outer ring of this three-section disc model should be the distributors, the broadcasters, the operators - the actual television stations and radio stations, the theme park operators, The Disney Stores, etc.

This kind of arrangement would allow the creative types to work together as a whole. It would also allow them to think out of the box more, even to create more lines of business for the corporation. There is an incredible amount of potential for synergy, innovation, and multilayered, nonlinear storytelling across several lines of business. Such arrangement would focus on the content, and allow the corporation to adapt more easily to changing and emerging formats and "pipelines". It is necessary for such a large, diverse corporation in a world that is changing so much.

Not everything need flow strictly from the inner core outward, either, or flow in the continuous line from the inner core to the outer ring. Some content, of course, would still be acquired from outside sources, and some content created by Disney would still end up being distributed by others.

This kind of arrangement could also apply to Disney-owned news businesses as well, which would obviously need to be kept separate from the "creative" core, but could still use much of the same "outer ring".

In Conclusion
Now, I'm no MBA. I just spend an inordinate amount of time thinking about corporate structure and adapting various entertainment projects to multiple media. I also wonder how a company known for (and making most of its money) from theme parks and animated or otherwise highly imaginative films could layoff so many people responsible for those products while still involved in such things as sports franchises. Maybe it is just the way business has to be. There are probably many people with sharp pencils who could tell me exactly why such an overhaul would not work. Then again, maybe there are more would agree with me. What do you think? Let me know.

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-- Ken Pellman

-- Posted May 15, 2001