Bob Iger, COO for Disney, recalls being at a new Disneyland opening in Hong Kong with Michael Eisner, CEO. He recalls watching the characters in the usual ceremony parade down the main street and realizing thatall the characters in the parade that had been created in the past decade were all Pixar’s. After 10 years of The LionKing, Beauty and the Beast, and Aladdin, there were then ten years of nothing for Disney.
During the same time Pixar was not only creating successful characters but were also lining up characters and projects like Cars,Ratatouille and WALL-E.Soon after that, in March 2005, Iger would replace Eisner asthe CEO and go before the board to explain his observation, which would lead tothe eventual Disney-Pixar merger. This merger would itself be an interestingstudy for another time but if you look at the deal, this was a reverse acquisition.
What happened here was classic “complacency” making theleader in characters – Disney lost its niche in the animations era. Walter Isaacson quoted Steve Jobs later on as saying “… we kept Pixar as a greatcompany and helped Disney remain one as well.”
This case study begs to ask the question what are we as Technology Executives doing to develop a “great IT department that will helphospitals remain one”. Technology leaders should be leading the next wave of innovative business and revenue models. Telehealth, e-visits, home health,patient experience and predictive modeling, Bio-medical and Clinical Engineering are a few (basic) areas of potential. More to come on other ventures that are beyond the traditional IT portfolio that will help hospitalsand organization push their competitive edge.
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ReplyDeleteInnovative Technology Executive Miles Samaratne
Great post. Reminds me of the scenario described in the Innovators dilemma, where large organizations continue to go upmarket in order to maximize profits, while small companies innovate.
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