His Impact on the World
I remember some time ago when a former Chinese leader was asked the question on what the effect of the French Revolution had on world history. The response was telling in the way he viewed time. His response was: "It's too early to tell." That's how I feel about Walt Disney.
Many people have written about and discussed his extraordinary impact on the entertainment industry, and I don't think anybody would refute that. But in my estimation his impact is still at a very early stage, and the story has just barely started to be told.
It's probably impossible to trace the impact he's had when considering business and industries that exist from his work. Just take theme parks. While there were others around when he created Disneyland, they were at that time very poorly run and filthy. He brought the whole industry to a high level through his vision. And that's just one small area.
When you take customer service, animation, and overall entertainment, you see that his dream brought about tremendous change, that to this day is still difficult to copy, even though in general it's known what he and the company have done.
One example is customer service. Disney (DIS) has a great side business today built on training other companies how to improve their customer service to a much higher level. It's not cheap to get their help either, yet it's worth every penny of the cost.
Other areas that in my estimation have a long way to go as far as understanding his influence, is in teaching and educating; not so much in public schools, but concerning conferences and various platforms like audio and video. He and the Disney company excelled and continue to excel in these areas.
Walt Disney is a deep well to go to, and we're going to have a lot of fun and interesting things to talk about him in the months ahead.
Much of what we hear about today concerning innovation, imagination, dreams and visions can be traced back to Walt Disney. It's not that he was the first to come up with these types of ideas, but he was the first that understood a larger view of how to take these things and bring them together in ways not seen before. That, more than anything, may be the underlying genius that was Walt Disney.
He was able to take what was a jigsaw puzzle at that time and bring it together into a plethora of creative endeavors. Even today there may not be anybody alive that is able to see things like Walt Disney did. Hopefully from our study of him, we'll get a much larger picture and understanding of what made him who he was, and how we can apply that to our own businesses and lives.
Other Walt Disney Sources:
"Walt Disney and the Quest for Community"
The Golden Age of Mickey Mouse
Chronology of the Walt Disney Company
Walt Disney's original plans for EPCOT
Builders and Titans: Walt Disney
Disney the Innovator vs Disney the Conservative
A belated thank you to pioneer Walt Disney
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» Walt Disney: A Man of Visions and Dreams - 2 from ManagersRealm
Walt's optimism came from his unique ability to see the entire picture.Our first post on Walt Disney had us looking in part at his vision and dreams, which he was able to gather together from a variety of sources and... [Read More]
Tracked on: January 6, 2008 11:35 PM | Permalink to Trackback