How walt disney evolved under dennis hightower’s leadership?

Introduction

Walt Disney commends Dennis Hightower’s efforts for the enormous growth and expansion in global markets. While, Walt Disney had been trying to penetrate and grow in the global markets and had failed successively until Dennis Hightower was on board with experience on global Marketing and Strategic Planning. The diversifiedcultureand traditions had made it difficult for Disney to expand its operations in other markets. While, Dennis Hightower magically improved sales and profits of Disney’s global operations in a matter of just 5 years, first as the Vice-President of Consumer Products and than as the President of the Television & Telecommunication Department.

This paper aims at researching what strategies were used by Dennis Hightower to make Disney what its today.

Dennis Hightower

Dennis Hightower at Walt Disney

Challenges in Europe

The Disney Traditions, the culture of local autonomy in each franchise and the challenges of cultural heterogeneity were all had to be dealt with to penetrate in the European market and gain access to more markets through it.

As the Vice President of Consumer Products, he was to handle responsibilities by changing the dynamics of the company in the region. He had well-developed practical, functional and peoples skills that could have been neutralized by language barriers and the European culture and traditions which Dennis Hightower was completely unfamiliar with. He explains that the experience he gained in Europe changed his management style from being an aggressive manager and executive to more of a coach, facilitator and mentor (Nanda, 1996).

SWOT Analysis of Walt Disney

Weaknesses

The major weakness of Disney is that majority of its business revenue is earned from business ventures in United States while the overseas operations contribute to only 5% of sales of the company. Certainly, there is a high risk factor involved with the company having high sunk, competition and investment. Any venture if fails would hit Disney’s balance sheet very hard and damage its reputation in the market. One other major problem Disney faces is the frequent changes in its top management and so the inconsistency in company’s policies and organizational structure which leads to miscommunication within the organization while enhancing powers of the bureaucracy in the system (Nanda, 1994).

Opportunities

With the markets becoming more adaptable and flexible to outsourcing andglobalization, the Walt Disney can expand its operations in other growing global markets. It can penetrate in the current markets it is operating in by offering new creative and innovative offerings while can offer its products and services in the global markets. It should focus on research and development for introducing more entertainment and media products for the greater satisfaction of consumers and creating value for them (Who Run Gov. com, 2010).

Threats

Decision Making

United European Structure

Designing a new system

Controls with Regions & Headquarters

Regions should have the have control over the marketing and creativity environment within its own region in order to generate more sales and revenues. The Headquarters should be responsible for the audit and administration. This would enable regions to amend offerings according to the culture of that market while headquarters should assist the regions in matters that are creating hindrances in their path to success. Regions should have the autonomy to generate and create business in their region.

Partnering

The idea to partner with players from different industries has been an easy way of entering the market and making their presence visible to the target audience. However, this might result in regional offices losing their business while partners flourished by working with Disney.

Hiring more qualified staff

Meeting Market Demand

Recommendations

Conclusion: Success in European Market

When he joined, Disney’s revenue from sales was $650 million while 100% of the revenue came from licensing based activities. The sales increased to $4. 5 billion with 46% of the revenues from the licensing-based business. The publishing wing issued 120 magazines in 16 languages and under Dennis it grew to 180 magazines in 27 languages. He also signed an exclusive 11 year relationship with Nestle Corporation to co-develop brandedfoodproducts. The sales of ‘ The Lion King’ soundtrack amounted to a record of 7 million cassettes and cds sold in Europe only.

References

Black Enterprise. (1996). A ‘magical’ ride comes to an end: Dennis Hightower leaves Disney to advance highereducation, Retrieved on 16th May 2010 from http://findarticles. com/p/articles/mi_m1365/is_n12_v26/ai_18407126/

Smith, Jessie, Carner. (1996). Encyclopedia of African American Business, Retrieved 17th May 2010, Green Wood Publishing Group.

The History Makers.( 1996). Dennis Hightower Biography, Retrieved on 16th May 2010 from http://www. thehistorymakers. com/biography/biography. asp? bioindex= 1807&category= Businessmakers&occupation= Corporate%20Executive&name= Dennis%20Hightower