Disney Pixar

The companies worked towards a culture that was more in line with team learning. Pixar had previously operated under the premise where people were given the full chance to be creative and use their ideas in order to learn from their success or failures. Disney allowed for creativity however was more micromanaged. This new cultural shift for Disney to let go of some of the control was a hard thing to do for them. Disney had initially lost some of the people with this shift in their culture mainly with those who failed to adapt to this new free-spirited environment. With Disney’s regimented culture they followed more of a top down approach within their work environment. This approach initially during the merger hindered the learning approach that Disney Pixar was trying to create. Some employees at Pixar initially had issues with the cultural clash of a free-spirited environment and the rigid environment Disney operated with causing problems with retaining the talent at Pixar. Despite these cultural clashes and differences Disney Pixar was able to pull their new-shared vision in a direction that allowed for cross-organizational collaboration and for a new culture that worked for both companies.

Managing conflict for organizations is very important in maintaining business relationships, especially ones that are profitable like that of Disney-Pixar. At the helm of the Walt Disney Company during the begging and end of these feuds was Michael Eisner and Bob Iger. Even though Michael Eisner is the one responsible for the conflict with Disney and Pixar, he should be equally responsible for trying to fix the damaged relationship. When trying to manage conflict there are several approaches that can be taken to resolve the conflict at hand: dominating, accommodating, problem solving, avoiding and compromising.

To answer the main question of the case, we must think of the main problems that it faces. We need to find the solution for Bob Iger. What to do with Disney: to make some improvements in the existed company to compete better with Pixar, or to make a deal with another studio? Or should he work more with Pixar, or maybe just buy the whole company?

Overall, it seems that Disney had the most benefits from the acquisition of Pixar, while there were mainly cons for Pixar. However, the general conception is that Disney overpaid for Pixar, which is potentially why have they have been willing to

Pixar had a few alternatives besides being acquired by Disney. One alternative for Pixar was to vertically integrate forward and enable distribution of its own content instead of relying on Disney by acquiring smaller media companies. However, this would be a highly unrelated diversification for Pixar and possibly create diseconomies of scope. Pixar would also face rigorous competition from other media conglomerates like Disney, Universal and Paramount.

The case is related with a decision regarding The walt Disney Company’s relation with Pixar. Though, history defined their collaboration and success. Pixar’s CEO Mr. Steve Jobs has tried to negotiate the contract but with no success because The Walt Disney Company wants to stay with previous terms. This pushed Steve Jobs to find for partnership with others. This search is a big threat for The Walt Disney Company and it has to decide whether to acquire Pixar or not.

This study examines how leadership, teamwork, and organizational learning can contribute in making mergers and acquisitions work. Our intention is to identify critical factors and practices needed for merger success. Our research is part of an ongoing project, and builds on previous analysis of merger success/failure in such organizations as Standard Oil, Exxon Mobile, and Time Warner-AOL. In this paper, we turn our attention to the recent merger of Pixar and Disney. In our view, the Disney-Pixar case seems to be a good example of a successful merger in progress. This is demonstrated very clearly by recent box office successes such as Academy Award

Founded in 1934, The Walt Disney Animation studio is the oldest surviving animation studio in the world. The studio is documented with creating new techniques for the day, which are now considered standard. Disney produces the most animated motion picture films. Another major animation studio based out of California is Pixar Animation Studios. However, Disney agreed to purchase Pixar in early 2006, for 7.4 billion dollars. Pixar has produced films that have won seven academy awards including Toy Story, Cars, and Finding Nemo.

As a subsidiary company of Disney, one of the biggest companies in the entertainment industry, Pixar has strong financial support. Disney provides the production cost of the films, and it handles marketing and films promotions as well as distributions. Each of Pixar’s films made between $300 million and $1 billion at the box office, and two of them have exceeded $1 billion in income (Lynch, 2016).

Disney has become a marketing goliath and the #1 entertainment company in the US. They have been able to develop a creativity-driven philosophy that over time was tempered by financial responsibility and that benefitted from powerful synergies between its divisions. From the very beginning, Disney has been synonymous with innovation within the children’s entertainment industry, from their introduction of animations with synchronized audio, full-length animated feature films and then later into theme parks and on-ice and Broadway shows. One important element of Disney’s success was the extent to which they integrated and expanded into different

To conclude, Pixar has many opportunities that can be explored, in both the global and local markets. There is a lot of potential for

Pixar Animation Studios was founded in 1979, initially specializing in producing state of the art computer hardware (Carlson, 2003). In 1990, due to poor product sales the company diversified from its core business and began producing computer animated commercials for outside companies. Success came for Pixar after the production of its first computer animated film ‘Toy story’ in 1995 (Hutton and Baute, 2007). Since then, Pixar has made many innovative animated feature films, with well known ones including - A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille and WALL-E, six of which are in the top grossing animated

Known to be one of the largest producers of multi-media content, Walt Disney and Pixar greatly impacted the entertainment industry with the use of three-dimensional generated content. It quickly gained popularity with the release of its animated movies and especially got the attention of children from their sequels. With the growing popularity, the competition in the media industry began to increase. Disney was then faced with a difficult decision regarding its relationship with Pixar on whether they should acquire or not acquire the company.

Established in 1923, Disney Studios released the first ever full-length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. By 2015, Disney Studios employed about “6,500 employees, and spent $2 billion producing films annually”. Alan Horn, Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, oversees five studios, that together made up Disney Studios. The Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures ‘Disney Live Action’ and Walt Disney Animation Studios ‘Disney Animation’ are directly from Walt Disney’s original studio. The three others were acquisitions made during Bob Iger’s time as chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company. The first was Disney's competitor animation studio, Pixar, which was purchased for $7.4 billion in 2006; second, Marvel Entertainment, which had its roots in comic books, for $4 billion in 2009; and finally the legendary filmmaker George Lucas’ Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in 2012. During this time, Disney Studios began pursuing a “tentpole” strategy, which entails investing in higher budget films that would hopefully produce a larger profit by pulling in a large portion of the market. The larger profit would also help compensate for losses that may occur in smaller budgeted films. As it stands, Disney studios currently produces 10-12 films annually with approximately eight of them with production budgets in excess of $150 million. The current breakdown of tentpole films expected annually is as follows: two from Marvel, one from Lucasfilm, one from Pixar,

Walt Disney Company is famed for its creativity, strong global brand, and uncanny ability to take service and experience businesses to higher levels. In the early 1990s, then-CEO Michael Eisner looked to the fast-food industry as a way to draw additional attention to the Disney presence outside of its theme parks - its retail chain was highly successful and growing rapidly.