Disney Publishing Worldwide

In a world of exploding choice for media consumers, the publishing business has remained very traditional: wedded to the book, the bookstore and control of content. I wanted to reinvent our business for this new world because I knew we would have a big advantage if we were the first to figure out how to respond to the need for new forms and styles of storytelling. So I decided to work with Strategos because their ideas about strategic innovation seemed to really fit our need and because I didn’t want an answer handed to us by a set of “industry experts” that would then peddle the same answer to all our competitors.

First, our leadership team worked with them to create a strategic roadmap – what Disney Publishing wanted to become 5 or 10 years out and how we could get there. We spent some time analyzing our competition. We then generated a number of strategic options that would create a differentiated position for us – one that both capitalized on our unique strengths and exploited the external change forces that are revolutionizing publishing. My leadership team and I took the results of that work, fleshed them out, and created a truly compelling and differentiated strategy that all of us believe in and have started to implement.

Next, I asked Strategos to help us find specific new growth opportunities to get us started toward this new vision. They engaged a large cross-section of our employees across the world to create a set of exciting, but concrete, new growth opportunities, consistent with our new strategy. These “innovation labs” energized our employees – each knew their voice mattered and that they were agents of change, an integral part of the process. Our leadership team then worked with Strategos to evaluate these opportunities, and decide which ones to pursue now, which ones to pursue later, and which ones to drop. We are now moving forward with the implementation of the first set of opportunities – and therefore toward making our new vision a reality.

I am really pleased with what has come out of our work together. Strategos consistently delivered on their commitments to us. The quality and passion of their team and the approaches and tools they brought pushed us to think differently and were key to the success of both initiatives. I look forward to working with them again as we move toward our new future, and would highly recommend them to any company and leadership team looking to reinvent their business and grow.

Deborah Dugan
President
Disney Publishing Worldwide