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by
Robert Iger
be the steward of his legacy.
future of Star Wars, George felt betrayed,
we’d suffer a breach of trust with our audience that would be very hard to recover from.
“Disney-fy” Star Wars.
that selling to Disney was like selling his children to “white slavers.”
decided to stay quiet and let it pass. There was nothing to be gained from engaging
in any public discourse or waging a defense.
Then George called me. “I was o...
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each deal depended on building trust with a single controlling entity.
authenticity was crucial. Steve had to believe my promise that
legacy, his “baby,” would be in good hands at Disney.
YOU DON’T INNOVATE, YOU DIE
Could we disrupt ourselves, and would Wall Street tolerate the losses that we would inevitably incur as we tried to truly modernize and transform the company?
a new distribution platform
with global reach, which we could use to deliver movies,
Something inside me didn’t feel right.
“If something doesn’t feel right to you, then it’s probably not right for you.”
included how to manage hate speech, and making fraught decisions regarding freedom
to do about fake accounts algorithmically spewing out political “messaging” to influence elections,
them I had “cold feet,”
becoming a distributor of our own content, straight to consumers, without intermediaries.
At some point over the years, I referred to a concept I called “management by press release”—meaning that if I say something with great conviction to the outside world, it tends to resonate powerfully inside our company.
better be, too. The
bracing effect.
it, fueled everyone with the energy and the commitment to move forward.
short-term losses in the hope of generating long-term growth—requires
new incentive structure
“I know why companies fail to innovate,” I said to them at one point. “It’s tradition. Tradition generates so much friction, every step of the way.” I talked about the investment community,
“Do you want to fall prey to the ‘innovator’s dilemma’ or do you want to fight it?”
long respected each other’s business instincts,
I have always been interested in politics and policy,
“You can run for any office you want, but not with this wife.”
the threats to our respective businesses:
Fox acquisition
when you viewed all of those assets through the lens of our new strategy. They could be pivotal to our future growth.
complaints about John Lasseter
52.4 billion—for the acquisition.
“Twenty-eight is as high as we can go.”
group of students at Ithaca College, my alma mater, about the future of the entertainment and media industries.
how a company’s integrity depends on the integrity of its people,
separate “content” from “technology.”
The idea was simply to let the content people focus on creativity and let the tech people focus on how to distribute things
Valerie Jarrett,
how unpredictable and volatile Roseanne has always
mercurial and volatile she could be.
“This morning we all woke up to a tweet by Roseanne Barr,
be intolerable and deplorable,
words, demanding quality and integrity from all of our people and of all of our products is paramount,
It was an easy decision, really. I never asked what the financial repercussions would be, and didn’t care. In moments like that, you have to look past whatever the commercial losses are and be guided, again, by the simple rule that there’s nothing more important than the quality and integrity of your people and your product. Everything depends on upholding that principle.
President Obama sent his appreciation, too.
