1.What accounted for Disney's success in the 1980s?
Disney's success in the 1980s can only be put in context after some attention is paid to the actions taken by Disney in earlier decades. The first action taken by the company that led to its eventual dominance of the entertainment industry has to be when Walt Disney emphasized, in the 1930s, the need to only license to the best companies. Similarly, the move to begin stocking the shelves of major retail chains, like Sears, upon theatrical release exponentially increased the amount of revenue taken in by both ventures. Finally, the move to re-release cartoons from its library on a limited basis has brought in tons of dollars for essentially no cost outside of a small marketing budget.
So when Mr. Eisner took charge in 1984, he was tasked with transforming what was already a fairly competent company, one that just happened to be going through a flat stage. Needless to say, the actions he took were highly productive. Eisner infused new blood into the company by recruiting successful businesspeople. Then he reemphasized the Disney culture at the corporate university.
With the employee base back on track, he started to pit creativity against finance in order to bring the best out of both sides of the company. As a check against these planned battles, he created positions to monitor the issues at hand. He was not afraid to risk the possibility of cannibalization if it could lead to synergy across business units. Eisner also placed a financial box around movie production to control costs.
Toward the close of the decade, Disney started to experiment with cross-promotion (as seen with the Roger Rabbit film). Around this time, there were also more divisions (Disney Development) and attractio ...