The Walt Disney Co.: The Entertainment King By Walt Disney
1. Conduct a Value Chain Analysis of The Walt Disney Company. Identify, categorize, and explain at least three activities that are important to Disney. Make sure to choose at least one primary and at least one secondary activity.
2. Consider Walt Disney's core industry to be the film industry. Based on that, describe which business units describe each category of diversification (related and unrelated) and why. Identify two business units for each category.
3. Evaluate Walt Disney's diversification strategy.
a. Identify two business units that add value to Disney as a corporation, and explain how they add value regarding Disney's core competencies. Analyze at the corporate-level strategy, not at the business-level.
b. Identify two business units that Walt Disney should divest, and provide your reasoning for each. Again, discuss Disney's core competencies and analyze at the corporate-level strategy level, not at the business-level.
c. Have they gone too far in their diversification efforts, or are they on track? Why? What would you recommend Disney do? Provide one recommendation with reasoning. Refer to the Southwest Airlines case questions for examples of weak & strong recommendations.
Written Case Assignments
When preparing a written case analysis it is important to be thoroughly familiar with the case. This means that you should read the case for both general impressions and for specific facts.
In writing a case analysis you are required to provide evidence from the case to support your assessments. Only data taken from the case may be used in supporting your answers. No outside sources may be used.
Each written assignment has a specific purpose. They are designed to help you develop skills at sifting through lots of data about a company and its industry, and finding that information which can help you understand why the company is or is not successful.
Once you understand what drives company's performance, only then can you see what needs to be done to correct strategic deficiencies and ensure future success.
Information on written case assignments
• Use single-spaced, 1" margins, Times New Roman, 12-point font with a maximum of 2 pages per assignment.
• Do not overuse bullet points. Elaborate and support your answers.
• Location of Cases. All cases are found in the course pack, which must be purchased separately as an e-book. The questions for each case are found under the Case Assignments tab in the Connect Course Page.
• Stay in the time frame of the case. Written assignments should present the situation as it exists at the time of the case, i.e., only use the information and data available from the case, not what you know now about the company. No outside research is necessary.
• No pre-review. Instructors will not review cases prior to submission.
• Grading includes quality of argument as well as consistency with answer key. There are right answers to most of the questions. Thus, this is not about your opinion but your accurate use of the frameworks and concepts presented in the class. That is, look at the case analyses as a practical test of your ability to use concepts to analyze and understand a complex situation. In addition, having the right answer but with a poor argument or incomplete evidence will also reduce your grade.
• Answer the questions provided. In your answer, include both the logic you used and evidence from the case to support your answer. Number your answers to correspond to the question you are answering.
• Cases are done individually. Duplicate cases will be considered cheating (see "Academic Dishonesty" below).