Technology development strategies

Book report: The ride of a lifetime

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Alejandro Garibay Reyes

A00822870

Profesor. David Guëmes Castorena

 May 17th, 2021.
The ride of a lifetime

The purpose of this report is to present an analysis of a book that relates the
concepts that we have been seeing in class with those presented in popular literature,
for this work I chose the book “The ride of a lifetime: lessons learned from 15 years as
CEO of the Walt Disney Company” published in 2019 by the company's director Robert
Iger and published under the signature of Random House in the United States. It should
be noted that Iger resigned from his position as CEO in February of 2020 to consolidate
himself as president of the company, however, he returned to assume his position as
director of the firm 2 months later as a result of the covid 19 pandemic.

Summary

The book is a glimpse of how Robert Iger became the CEO of Disney, the book
is structured in 2 parts each one with its respective chapters, the first part "Learning"
tells us about Iger's first years in the industry and how the acquired knowledge he
gained during these years helped him to be one of the most respectable CEOs in the
industry to these days, the first part culminates in chapter seven with the ascendance of
Robert to the position of executive director of Disney; On the other hand, "Leading" is
the second part of the book, which takes us into what, until 2019, Iger has achieved as
CEO of the Disney Company, sharing his first strong decisions within the company, as
well as his expansion strategy he was able to execute.

The book is heavily related to what we have seen in class, and many of the
concepts that we have used are strongly addressed in the course of the book: the
culture of the company, the structure of the firm, the acquisition and combination of
corporations, the management of these, and the decision-making processes are
explained through Iger's experience and are presented in a story-like way from his
perspective, so it can even be seen as the analysis of another case proposed by the
class to link key-concepts with everyday life situations.

Here is a summary of what was approached during the two parts that make up
the book, which is presented as informative instead of memory.

Part 1: Learning

The book begins with Iger telling us how he began his working days in television
networks, being a consultant in the ABC news section as his first formal job which gave
him an opportunity to be able to take a step and be hired in the sports section of the
same firm. In this new area, he met Roone (his boss at that time) and to whom he
attributes many of the qualities that he continues to possess today; he mentions how his
stay at ABC sports opened the door for him to take great risks by seeing how Roone bet
in order of the implementation of emerging technologies such as cameras of different
speeds, drones, and flash cameras to give his clients a unique experience, Robert
emphasizes that Roone was the first person to tell him his famous phrase "innovate or
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die" which continues to appear in his head today when looking for new technologies or
great decision-making.

Followed by this, we are immersed in his first position as vice president of the
sports section, which would give him one of the primary bases to be in the sights of
higher positions. By being vice president of sports, Iger had the opportunity to attend the
coverage of the 88 Winter Games, which were threatened as the temperature suddenly
rose and did not allow the sporting events to take place; It was the wise decision-
making and control that Iger issued that put him in his sights to be president of
entertainment at the firm and the most important reason for which he obtained the
position. Throughout this process, a smaller firm bought ABC to be able to merge with
them, putting Iger through his first corporate culture shock in his career, however he
describes that the support of ABC's new owners would help him shape his persona.

From now on, Robert's career grew exponentially: he was hired as director of
ABC entertainment, for which he presents his first decisions that would mark a complete
segment of the firm. Great experiences are highlighted on how his decisions led ABC to
generate programs that would position them as the largest entertainment chain of the
moment, however, he also accepts that he had several creative failures but he knew
how to cope with them so that the firm continued to grow; sometime later and thanks to
his management, the presidency of ABC was granted to him, however, a bigger
monster would come to put him to the test: Disney's interest in buying ABC.

As expected, Disney buys ABC, which at first is narrated and presented as a

disaster within the company since both corporations had a very own, marked and
different business culture from that of the other firm. ABC had opted for a no hierarchy
and a one-to-one reach with all the firm's workers, as well as betting on people who
were passionate and creative at work; on the other hand, Disney was a company with a
very marked corporate structure and where you had to report your tasks to a specific
person, with workers who came from the most prestigious universities and experts
within the branch of the industry, so Iger seeks for the way to try to make a more
cohesive workspace between the two firms, all of this happening at the same time that
ABC was in decline as it had not had a success in the last year, putting Iger in doubt as
to whether he could handle a position of as great magnitude as it was now that it was
part of Disney.

Everything changed with an idea of great magnitude that led Iger to be respected
within his work area, an ambitious idea that would change the path of his working life:
the coverage of the change of the millennium of the year 2000, opting for a 24 hour
coverage of how this new millennium came to every part of the world. The show was
unique, and the success was immense as no entertainment firm had the same idea.
This risky idea that Robert did gave him the position of chairman of the board at Disney
Corporation, positioning him as the right hand of the then Disney CEO Michael Eisner.

However, upon entering Disney's board of directors, Iger could see the other side
of the coin: Michael's strategy was leading them to imminent decline, so much so that
many outside companies began bidding to buy Disney because disaster was imminent:

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the relationship with Steve Jobs and his company Pixar resulted in disaster, which
affected technological innovation at Disney animations, the culture of the company did
not work and the failures of Disney only accumulated, which resulted in the dismissal of
Michael Eisner and the beginning of Rober Iger's legacy as CEO of Disney, with the
expectation that he could save the company.

Part 2: Leading

This part is related to Iger's experience as CEO from 2005 to 2019, the first thing
he mentions is the strategy he implemented and his priorities as CEO:

1. “We needed to devote most of our time and capital to the creation of high-
quality branded content”.
2. “We needed to embrace technology to the fullest extent, reach more
consumers in more modern, more relevant ways”
3. “We needed to become a truly global company”.

In the same way, they present us with the first big decisions that marked his work
as CEO, the first, to fix the situation with Steve Jobs and Pixar to bet on the
technological and creative innovation that they had put aside; and second, to change
the way in which Disney was making decisions, for which he set out to change the
strategic planning that had governed Disney for a long time.

Thanks to the new vision that Iger proposed, he came up with his first big idea:
buying Pixar. This caused a stir throughout the Disney board, due to costs,
relationships, magnitude, etc. However, Iger managed to close a deal that would bring
Disney to a merge with Pixar and would be the first of its three major acquisitions,
fulfilling its first and second goals by reviving the relationship with Steve Jobs. It should
be noted that Iger did not compromise Pixar's distinctive culture by purchasing the firm,
so success was reaped the way he did.

The decision-making that Iger proposed after this led him to aim for the bigger
and take great risks, this is how he led Disney to expand to the magnitude that we all
know today, highlighting the purchase of Marvel as the second major acquisition, being
the third the addition of Lucas Films and the entire Star Wars universe to Disney, in the
same way they share the expansion of the theme parks and the implementation of the
Disney cruise line, the opt for the future by betting for streaming services and creating
Disney ¡+, the acquisition of Fox and technology companies that would allow Disney to
continue growing in technology, market and innovation. In the same way, Iger
recognizes that decisions should be for the good of the company and not give a hasty
"yes", he tells us how Disney was about to buy Twitter, however they did not close the
deal since it would not have any benefit for the corporate that he was running.

We have to make it clear that not everything is golden, just as the book presents
us with great achievements, innovations and decision-making, it also tells us some of
the biggest challenges that Iger has had during his stay as CEO of the company, always
highlighting how he acted and the decisions he had to make under great pressure so as

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not to harm the corporate monster that he has in his hands, some of the challenges that
are presented to us and that are of great magnitude can be summarized in the 3 most
important: a little boy killed by an alligator inside Disney’s Park in Orlando, the shooting
in Pulse Bar a couple of miles away of this same park (we found out that the shooter
first target was Magic Kingdom itself) and 9/11.

Iger closes the book with a reflection that how we react to the good or bad in a
company can lead us to success or ruin, saying that betting on technology and taking
risks can one day make you the next CEO of corporate Disney.

Conclusions

The book is closely related to all the topics we have seen in class, so it was an
enriching task to be able to relate those concepts with one of the most famous
management stories in history within what is possibly the largest firm in the world.

I think that by having a prior theoretical knowledge thanks to the class, the
understanding of the reading and the situations presented were easier to digest and
understand: knowing what the company culture is, the hierarchy within corporations, as
well as having analyzing cases presented as a story as the book does, helped me to
visualize it in the way that we have been taught in class, being very enriching for me as
well as to visualize the theoretical part in a real story.

Being honest, I caught myself analyzing the book as a case as we do it in the

class, seeking for more variables to analyze within the problems that were presented
during Iger's personal experience, and which were not necessarily explicit within the
narrative.

Finally, this is the first time I have read a book on innovation, technology and
management, and I am eager to read more.

Some quotes and related concepts

Here are some of my favorite quotes and some class-related concepts I found
trough the book.

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