In this essay the early life, failures and achievement of one of world’s greatest icons Walt Disney is discussed. As an entrepreneur he achieved benchmark milestones in his short life span. His management and entrepreneurship skill is the reason why Disney studio is one of the most popular production houses in the world.
To escape from the shackles of a strict father, young Walter found peace in his sketches. His illustrations made him feel like he was in control of the situation of the world that he has created. This scared naive young boy grew up to be world famous creator of cultural icon Mickey Mouse and set up a multimillion dollar production house. He was the first to introduce synchronised music along with cartoon and built the famous Disney theme park. Cheerfulness, innocence, longing and optimism are all that we associate with Disney but the back story of the founder is filled with melancholy and obscurity (Walter Elias Disney, 2017).
After facing a rough childhood with an abusive and disciplinary father, young Walter went to France with the Red Cross ambulance Corps during World War I, at the age of 16. Post war he got a job with Film Ad co in Kansas City, Missouri. This is an advertising firm who produced animated features that were shown before films. Slowly Disney started creating his own shorts with the help of borrowed equipments and called it laugh-O-Grams (Voigt et al., 2017).
Facing a lot of hardships and failure Disney moved to Los Angeles where his elder brother lived. Here, after a lot of struggle he finally got the opportunity to showcase his first feature which was later stolen from him due to copyright issue. Walter later along with his elder brother Roy co-founded the Walt Disney production. At this time Disney was already working on a new character who he called “Mickey Mouse”. Plane crazy and The Gallopin’ gaucho were silent films and did not stir any kind of excitement among the public and hence they did not receive any distribution.
During this period was the advent of sound in motion picture was discovered and Disney saw his calling. The third film the production house came up with was called Steamboat Willie; it was an animated sound motion picture. The feature was immediately loved by the public and the voice of Walt Disney as Mickey Mouse became legendary and The New York Times called it ingenious (Urick et al., 2015).
As an Entrepreneur Walt Disney always knew how to keep and how important employees are in a set up. From the very beginning he included the Harman brothers Hugh and Iwerks in his team. Later Iwerks also relocated to California to be with Walter and his brother and be a part of their endeavour. Disney had an inclination towards learning and advancement of technologies. Walt, unlike most other filmmakers of that era embraced the change and uses it for the development and benefit of the organisation. He quickly understood the revolution of sound in cinema and very tactfully uses it in his movies. He also realized how music could change the mood and theme of an animation (Bohas, 2015).
After the success of Steamboat Willie Disney invested in a group of artist and animators and soon Mickey was accompanied by his team of friends. Disney studio flourished during the depression because the cartoons offered the people a window of escape from reality, even if it was just for a while. While the Depression gripped the rest of the country, the Disney studio flourished. The economy was in great depression while Disney studio was planning a full length motion picture with colour and music.
Animation is a time consuming affair and hence such a project at this point of time would mean great risk. But, Walt Disney has always proved to be a risk taker he has faced failure but he is an example of risk management in modern times. It took for over three years to produce the full length animation motion picture. In the year 1937, Snow white and the seven dwarfs hit the theatres and there was no looking back for Disney studios form that moment.
It was a benchmark creation on the world of motion picture. All the theatres that were running the film were always crowded. The artists received great compliments from the critics. Academy also honoured the work and the effort of Disney for the first time by presenting him with eight awards in various categories.
Disney was farsighted, which is one of the best qualities of any successful entrepreneur; he recognised the scope and the capability of animation at the very beginning. He knew that animation was not to be an accessory of a film it has the capacity to hold the centre stage and he proved it with the back to back commercial hits after Snow White. All these movies were not only a commercial success they went on to become classics and during this period there were no other studios who were working on full length animations. Disney later also produced documentaries and live-actions films (Jackson, 2014).
As an entrepreneur Disney always look for ways and means to promote his brand and in order to do so he understood the reach of television. At this time television was a growing medium and Disney saw the opportunity and grabbed it. He hosted a show called Walt Disney Presents became an instant favourite of the public, the show gathered profit and also channelized as a promotional tool.
The world was yet to witness the 185 acre dream of Walt Disney. He mortgaged most of his assets and financed the construction of Disneyland in California. Popularly known as The Happiest place on earth, it soon became one of the most popular tourist destinations on the world. Finally Disney had brought his imaginary world in life with the amusement park (Roy, 2015).
Walt Disney is an inspiration to many young artists and aspiring entrepreneurs around the world. He had all the qualities of a good entrepreneur: farsightedness, urge to take risk, urge of learning and being able to connect to his employees are some of the characteristics of his greatness. As he believed in his dreams and wanted to pursue them he knew he had to be a good sales man in order to churn money. He believed that failure is just a step ahead towards fulfilling the dream. Disney now stands at a value of $45.429 Billion as the second largest mass media broadcasting house in the world. Disney has touched our childhood and taught us to be happy, cheerful and kind. The story of Walt Disney teaches us to be dynamic, to have an open mind towards technology, learning is the most important process towards growth, embrace change and take risks.
Reference List:
Bohas, A. (2015). Transnational Firms and the Knowledge Structure: The Case of the Walt Disney Company. Global Society, 29(1), 23-41.
Jackson, K. M. (2014). Walt Disney as Reader and Storyteller: The Books in His Library and What They Mean. Walt Disney, from Reader to Storyteller: Essays on the Literary Inspirations, 9.
Roy, T. B. (2015). The edutainer: Walt Disney, nature films, and American understandings of nature in the twentieth century. Temple University.
Urick, M. J., Gnecco, J., Jackson, D., Greiner, M., & Sylada, S. (2015). Perceptions of business leaders: An examination of portrayals in US motion pictures. Journal of Leadership and Management, 3(5-6).
Voigt, K. I., Buliga, O., & Michl, K. (2017). Making People Happy: The Case of the Walt Disney Company. In Business Model Pioneers (pp. 113-126). Springer International Publishing.
Walter Elias Disney. (2017). entrepreneur.com. Retrieved 25 July 2017, from https://www.entrepreneur.com/article/197528
