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"'We're kind of like an old married couple,' said Imagineer Chris Crump, center, of his longtime colleague Larry Nikolai, right. Lisa Girolami, the ride's producer, is left. It took nearly four years to conceive and build 'Ariel's Undersea Adventure,' which opened at Disney California Adventure Park last week. The trio spearheaded a group of over 100 designers, architects, lighting experts and other specialists." Source of caption and photo: online version of the WSJ article quoted and cited below.

(p. C11) It took nearly four years to conceive and build a theme-park ride that put visitors inside the world of "The Little Mermaid," including several musical numbers, a few key narrative moments and 184 figures from Disney's animated hit.

And that followed the 18 years it took to settle on an approach to the ride, which was on the entertainment giant's to-do list almost from the day the film was released in 1989. The ride finally opened last week at Disney California Adventure, Disneyland's younger neighbor, and takes visitors through a condensed version of the movie's narrative, cramming nine scenes and four songs into 5½ minutes.

. . .

They start by thinking big: Ms. Girolami described their brainstorming sessions as "an iterative process"--first deciding what parts of the movie to retell, then returning to the drawing table as the decision-making focuses to smaller and smaller details.

Then, helped by "rapid prototyping," a technology that allows them to generate physical models directly from computer-design files, the group tests and retests their models.

. . .

The Imagineers pride themselves on their never-say-die spirit. "We commit to things creatively that haven't been done," Ms. Girolami said. "Someone will say, 'That's never been done before,' and it's our job to say, 'Great--let's do it.' "

For the full story, see:

Ethan Smith. "CREATING; Taking the Little Mermaid for a Spin." The Wall Street Journal (Sat., JUNE 4, 2011): C11.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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I watched several commentaries on Steve Jobs after his death was announced today (Weds., Oct. 5). I think the one above, from CNBC, was one of the best.

It highlights many important aspects of Jobs' life. That he came back from failure, that he brought us products we didn't know we needed until he showed us what they could do, that his products disrupted the status quo of whole industries, that at his death he owned more shares of Disney than anyone else. (Steve Jobs and Walt Disney were two of the greatest "project entrepreneurs" of all time.)

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Jon Favreau. Source of photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. 11) You've announced you won't be doing the third "Iron Man" movie, in order to make "Magic Kingdom," which is a Disney movie about a family that gets caught inside Disneyland. A movie produced by Disney about a Disney theme park? It sounds a little cynical.

That's my Rubik's Cube that I have to solve on this one. I found a writing partner in the novelist Michael Chabon, who shares a passion for the ambition of Walt.

For the full interview, see:

ANDREW GOLDMAN. "TALK; Jon Favreau, From Swingers to Aliens." The New York Times Magazine (Sun., July 31, 2011): 11.

(Note: bold in original, indicating comments/questions by interviewer Andrew Goldman.)

(Note: the online version of the interview is dated July 29 (sic), 2011.)

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Liberal columnist Frank Rich writes of the home movie "Disneyland Dream"---with a measure of eloquence, but unfortunately also with a measure of condescension and sarcasm. In the end, he believes the dream is dead.

But Rich is wrong. Disneyland is still the happiest place on earth, and Walt Disney's entrepreneurial spirit is also still alive.

Here are a couple of the more eloquent bits of Rich (though not entirely devoid of sarcasm):

(p. 14) "Disneyland Dream" was made in the summer of 1956, shortly before the dawn of the Kennedy era. You can watch it on line at archive.org or on YouTube. Its narrative is simple. The young Barstow family of Wethersfield, Conn. -- Robbins; his wife, Meg; and their three children aged 4 to 11 -- enter a nationwide contest to win a free trip to Disneyland, then just a year old. The contest was sponsored by 3M, which asked contestants to submit imaginative encomiums to the wonders of its signature product. Danny, the 4-year-old, comes up with the winning testimonial, emblazoned on poster board: "I like 'Scotch' brand cellophane tape because when some things tear then I can just use it."

. . .

. . . The Barstows accept as a birthright an egalitarian American capitalism where everyone has a crack at "upper class" luxury if they strive for it (or are clever enough to win it). It's an America where great corporations like 3M can be counted upon to make innovative products, sustain an American work force, and reward their customers with a Cracker Jack prize now and then. The Barstows are delighted to discover that the restrooms in Fantasyland are marked "Prince" and "Princess." In America, anyone can be royalty, even in the john.

"Disneyland Dream" is an irony-free zone. "For our particular family at that particular time, we agreed with Walt Disney that this was the happiest place on earth," Barstow concludes at the film's end, from his vantage point of 1995. He sees himself as part of "one of the most fortunate families in the world to have this marvelous dream actually come true" and is "forever grateful to Scotch brand cellophane tape for making all this possible for us."

For the full commentary, see:

FRANK RICH. "Who Killed the Disneyland Dream?" The New York Times, Week in Review Section (Sun., December 25, 2010): 14.

(Note: ellipses added.)

(Note: the online version of the commentary is dated December 25, 2010.

Part 1 of "Disneyland Dream" via YouTube's "embed" feature:

Part 2 of "Disneyland Dream" via YouTube's "embed" feature:

Part 3 of "Disneyland Dream" via YouTube's "embed" feature:

Part 4 of "Disneyland Dream" via YouTube's "embed" feature:

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Source of book image: http://www.examiner.com/images/blog/EXID983/images/dancing_in_the_dark_by_morris_dickstein_250.jpg

(p. 17) After a fond, lingering look at "Shall We Dance" -- Ginger Rogers and Fred Astaire in the spotlight, romancing to songs by George and Ira Gershwin -- Dickstein sums up expertly: "Each number is a miniature of the movie, moving from singing alone, dancing alone, dancing with the wrong person, or dancing to the wrong music to making beautiful music together." With his next breath he roughly reminds us of the context: "It's the music, the dancing, that saves all this from familiar romantic cliché. As photography documents the Depression, dance countermands it." And then he takes one more step back to give us an even broader view: "The culture of elegance, as represented by Astaire and the Gershwins, was less about the cut of your tie and tails than the cut of your feelings, the inner radiance that was one true bastion against social suffering. They preserved in wit, rhythm and fluidity of movement what the Depression almost took away, the high spirits of Americans, young and modern, who had once felt destined to be the heirs and heiresses of all the ages." Sheer delight, pure escapism, serves its cathartic purpose -- and it means something, too.

Which makes the omission of Walt Disney (his name doesn't even appear in the index) all the more perplexing. Even if one rejects the provocative claim by the historian Warren Susman that "Mickey Mouse may in fact be more important to an understanding of the 1930s than Franklin Roosevelt," it's hard to deny Disney a place in the pantheon of the decade's movie­makers, if only for "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs" and "Fantasia." Whether or not the cartoons that delighted '30s audiences are complex works of art, they would have slotted nicely into several of Dickstein's chapters. On the lookout for a cultural artifact that served to "lift sagging morale and stimulate optimism about the future"? Try any one of the dozens of animated shorts featuring that cartoon collective, Mickey, Donald Duck and Goofy. Every gag is an explosion of energy, and the whirligig of slapstick invention always ends happily, thanks to the orchestrated efforts of our heroes. Mickey, described by Disney as "a little fellow trying to do the best he could," may have been born in the late '20s, but he grew up a pure creature of the '30s.

For the full review, see:

ADAM BEGLEY. "Side by Side ." The New York Times Book Review (Sun., September 27, 2009): 17.

(Note: the online version of the review is dated September 25, 2009.)

Book reviewed:

Dickstein, Morris. Dancing in the Dark: A Cultural History of the Great Depression. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2009.

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"Roy E. Disney, shown in 1996, was considered a tough and outspoken critic of top executives at the Walt Disney Company." Source of caption and photo: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

(p. B18) LOS ANGELES -- Roy E. Disney, who helped revitalize the famed animation division of the company founded by his uncle, Walt Disney, and who at times publicly feuded with top Disney executives, died on Wednesday in Newport Beach, Calif. He was 79.

His death, at Hoag Memorial Hospital Presbyterian, was caused by stomach cancer, a spokeswoman for the Walt Disney Company said. Mr. Disney, who had homes in Newport Beach and the Toluca Lake district of Los Angeles, was the last member of the Disney family to work at the entertainment conglomerate built by his uncle and his father, Roy O. Disney.

As a boy the younger Roy would play in the halls of his uncle's studio, where animators often used him as a test audience as they toiled on movies like "Pinocchio." As an adult he helped bring the animation studio back from the brink, overseeing a creative renaissance that led to "The Little Mermaid," "Beauty and the Beast" and "The Lion King."

But the soft-spoken Mr. Disney was primarily known for a willingness to question the company's top managers, aggressively and publicly, when he felt they were mishandling the family empire. Some people in the company referred to him as its real-life Jiminy Cricket: a living conscience who was at times intensely disliked by management for speaking out.

. . .

Returning to the company in 1984, Mr. Disney set about revitalizing the floundering animation division. He obtained financing, for instance, for a computerized postproduction facility, helping to make possible the revolving ballroom scene in "Beauty and the Beast."

For the full obituary, see:

BROOKS BARNES. "Roy E. Disney Dies at 79; Rejuvenated Animation." The New York Times (Thurs., December 17, 2009): B18.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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(p. 325) The real Disney may yet elude his most fervent admirers' and detractors' suffocating grasp. When he was young, he was a sort of human Brer Rabbit, constantly wriggling out of the snares set for him by the likes of Charles Mintz and Pat Powers (not to mention Laugh-O-gram's creditors). He emerged finally, and unexpectedly, as the creator of a new art form, one whose potential has still scarcely been tapped, by him or anyone else. It is hard to imagine that man--the passionate young artist, the intense "coordinator," the man who scrutinized every frame of Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs with a lover's zeal--trapped forever in anyone's briar patch.

Source:

Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. 1 ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.

(Note: italics in original.)

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(p. 324) Disney seems no more real in the growing body of academic critiques of the man and the company that bears his name. Many of these critiques are vaguely if not specifically Marxist in their methodology, and they display the usual Marxist tendency to bulldoze the complexities of human behavior in the pursuit of an all--embracing interpretation of Disney's life and work. What fatally cripples most academic writing about Walt Disney is simple failure to examine its supposed subject. Disney scholarship, like many other kinds of scholarship in today's academy, feeds on itself. The common tendency is for scholars to rush past the facts of Disney's life and career, frequently getting a lot of them wrong, in order to write about what really interests them, which is what other scholars have already written. It is this incestuous quality, even more than such commonly cited sins as a reliance on jargon, that makes so much academic writing, on Disney as on other subjects, claustrophobically difficult to read.



Disney has attracted other writers whose unsupportable claims and speculations sometimes win approval of scholars all too eager to believe the worst of the man. The persistent accusations of anti-Semitism are only the mildest examples of an array whose cumulative effect is to portray a Disney who was, among other vile things, racist, misogynist, imperialist, sexually warped. a spy for J. Edgar Hoover, desperate to conceal his illegitimate Spanish birth, (p. 325) and so terrified of death that he had his body cryogenically frozen. Pathologies are undoubtedly at work here, none of them Disney's.

Source:

Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. 1 ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.

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(p. 291) Said Bob Gurr, a member of the WED staff: "One big thrust behind our design work for the World's Fair was the fact that we were going to own all the equipment. In other words, somebody else would build the pavilion, on somebody else's property, but the show equipment that went in there was Disney's, and he had a ready-made location waiting for it. The fact that the Fair was going to run two years meant he could build more expensively, and Disney priced these projects in a way that the sponsors were paying for everything for a two-year use."

Disney approached the fair with a certain skepticism, even so. "You don't like to do those things unless you have fun doing 'em," he said in 1961, when work on the exhibits was just getting under way "You don't do 'em for money." Robert Moses, the imperious road builder who was in command of the fair, "wanted us to develop the amusement area and we looked at it," Disney said, 'but it just wasn't for us. I wouldn't want to try to do anything in New York. I'm not close enough. . . . On top of that, I mean I don't know whether I want to do any outside of Disneyland because you don't want to spread yourself thin."

Source:

Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. 1 ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.

(Note: ellipsis in original.)

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(p. 286) "He is shy with reporters." Edith Efron wrote for TV Guide in 1965. "His eyes are dull and preoccupied, his affability mechanical and heavy-handed. He gabs away slowly and randomly in inarticulate, Midwestern speech that would be appropriate to a rural general store. His shirt is open, his tie crooked. One almost expects to see over-all straps on his shoulders and wisps of hay in his hair. . . . If one has the patience to persist, however, tossing questions like yellow flares into the folksy fog, the fog lifts, a remote twinkle appears in the preoccupied eves, and the man emerges."

Here again, as in other interviews from the 1960s, Disney permitted himself to sound bitter and resentful when he said anything of substance: "These avant-garde artists are adolescents. It's only a little noisy element that's going that way, that's creating this sick art. . . . There is no cynicism in me and there is none allowed in our work. . . . I don't like snobs. You find some of intelligentsia, they become snobs. They think they're above everybody else. They're not. More education doesn't mean more common sense. These ideas they have about art are crazy. . . . I don't care about critics. Critics take themselves too seriously. They think the only way to be noticed and to be the smart guy is to pick and find fault with things. It's the public I'm making pictures for."

Source:

Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. 1 ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.

(Note: ellipses and italics in original.)

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The story below is very reminiscent of a story that Michael Lewis tells in The New, New Thing about how entrepreneur Jim Clark learned to fly.

Possible lesson: impatience and quick learning may not be traits of all high level entrepreneurs, but they appear to have been traits of at least two.

(p. 213) Seventeen years later, Broggie told Richard Hubler that teaching Disney how to run a lathe and drill press and other machinery was difficult "because he was impatient. So I'd make what we call a set-up in a lathe and turn out a piece and say, 'Well, that's how you do it.' He would see part of it and he was impatient, so he would want to turn the wheels--and then something would happen. A piece might fly out of the chuck and he'd say, 'God-damn it. why didn't you tell me it was going to do this?' Well, you don't tell him, you know? It was a thing of--well--you learn it. He said one day, . . . 'You know, it does me some good sometimes to come down here to find out I don't know all about everything.' . . . How would you sharpen the drill if it was going to drill brass or steel? There's a difference. And he learned it. You only had to show him once and he got the picture."

This was a characteristic that other people in the studio noticed. "He had a terrific memory," Marc Davis said. "He learned very quickly. . . . You only had to explain a thing once to him and he knew how to do it. Other people are not the same. I think this is a problem he had in respect to everybody . . . his tremendous memory and his tremendous capacity for learning. He wasn't book learned but he was the most fantastically well educated man in his own way. . . . He understood the mechanics of everything. . . . Everything was a new toy. And this also made him a very impatient man. He was as impatient as could be with whoever he worked with."

Disney's lack of formal education manifested itself sometimes in jibes at his college-educated employees, but more often in the odd lapses--the mispronounced words, the grammatical slips--that can mark an autodidact. "For a guy who only went to the eighth grade," Ollie Johnston said, "Walt educated himself beautifully. His vocabulary was good. I only heard him get sore (p. 214) about a big word once in a story meeting. Everyone was sitting around talking and Ted Sears said, 'Well, I think that's a little too strident.' Walt said, 'What the hell are you trying to say, Ted?' He hadn't heard that word before.

Source:

Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. 1 ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.

(Note: ellipses in original.)

For a similar story about Jim Clark, see:

Lewis, Michael. The New New Thing: A Silicon Valley Story. New York: W. W. Norton & Company, 2000.

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(p. 212) Before returning to Los Angeles, Disney and Kimball also went to Dearborn, Michigan, outside Detroit, and visited a village of another kind--Henry Ford's Greenfield Village, a collection of old and reconstructed buildings that included the Wright brothers' bicycle shop and a replica of Thomas Edison's laboratory. Greenfield Village, which Ford established in 1929, had a strong autobiographical element: many of its buildings were there because they had been significant in Ford's life, as with the school he attended and the scaled- down replica of his first auto plant. Greenfield was, besides, a make-believe village, a mixture of buildings spanning centuries. There was no pretense, as at Colonial Williamsburg, of re-creating the past.

Disney had visited Greenfield Village at least once before, in April 1940, but this time he returned to Burbank with his imagination stimulated. He was thinking now beyond a miniature train for his own home. He drafted a memorandum on August 31, 1948, in which he set out in detail what might go into a "Mickey Mouse park" on the sixteen acres the studio owned across Riverside Drive. Ford's influence can be felt in Disney's description of an idyllic small town, anchored by a city hall and a railroad station. There would have been a specifically Disney presence in the park only through a toy store that sold Disney toys and books and a shop where Disney artists could sell their own work.

Disney had been talking about a park of' some kind, on the studio lot or adjacent to it, for years, perhaps since the late 1930s, the idea being to have something to entertain visitors to a studio that was otherwise very much a workaday place. For the studio to embark on such a project in 1948 was irnpractical, though, given its financial condition, and Disney's memo had no immediate consequences.

Source:

Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. 1 ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.

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(p. 152) As late as January 1940, Disney still resisted selling stock--"I wanted to build this in a different way," he told sonic of his artists--but by then his need for money was such that going public had become the lesser of evils. Preferred stock in Walt Disney Productions was offered to the public on April 2, 1940. The money raised helped pay for the Burbank studio ($1.6 million) and retired other debts (more than $2 million). The common stock remained in the Disneys' hands. The company took out a $1.5 million insurance policy on Walt's life.

Disney remembered having lunch with Ford Motor Company executives a few days after the stock issue, when he passed through Detroit on his way back from New York. Henry Ford himself joined the group after lunch, and when Disney told the old autocrat about selling preferred stock, Ford said. "If you sell any of it, you should sell it all." That remark, Disney said, "kind of left me thinking and wondering for a while." Ford "wanted that control," Disney said. "That's what he meant by that." Disney shared the sentiment, even in relatively small matters. On July 1, 1940, he told the studio's publicity department: "From now on all publicity going out of this studio must have my O.K. before it is released. There shall be no exceptions to this rule."

Source:

Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. 1 ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.

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Source of book image: http://www.michaelspornanimation.com/splog/wp-content/e/a336.jpg

I have always believed, and recently increasingly believe, that Walt Disney was one of the most important entrepreneurs of our time.

One of the most favorably reviewed biographies of Disney is Michael Barrier's The Animated Man. (At some point in the future, I will briefly discuss an alternative biography of Disney by Gabler.)

I have not thoroughly read The Animated Man, but have thoroughly skimmed it. It appears to be a very useful account of Walt Disney's life.

I did not want to wait until I had fully read it, in order to highlight a few passages that I think may be of special interest. I will do so in the next few weeks.

Reference to the book discussed:

Barrier, Michael. The Animated Man: A Life of Walt Disney. 1 ed. Berkeley, CA: University of California Press, 2007.

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Walt Disney with Mickey Mouse in Disneyland. Source of photo: http://app2.sellersourcebook.com/users/101907/ebay_125.jpg

One of the characteristics of innovative entrepreneurs is that they have the vision to see possibilities that others do not see, and the perseverance to turn the vision into reality.

When I saw the mug pictured above, I bought one. It shows a frumpy middle-aged Walt Disney in an empty black and white Disneyland looking down at a smiling full-color Mickey Mouse.

By chance, this summer, we were present at the birthday of Disneyland. We attended the brief celebration on Main Street. I found myself getting choked up when they played a recording of Walt Disney at the park dedication, saying that Disneyland was intended to be the happiest place on earth.

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Daniela Earnest at her lemonade stand (left) and in court (right). Source of photo: http://3.bp.blogspot.com/_GGAmzDRA_BY/SnvDbYoMpzI/AAAAAAAAHEg/W1BI2XK8DH4/s400/daniela%2Bearnest.jpg

(p. 5A) THE FRESNO BEE

TULARE, Calif. -- Eight­-year- old Daniela Earnest made lemonade out of lemons in more ways than one last week.

Hoping to raise money for a family trip to Disneyland, the Tulare girl opened a lemonade stand Monday. But she didn't have a business license, so the city shut it down that day.

. . .

Tulare officials said they could not recall ever shutting down a lemonade stand before, though such action is not uncommon. Authorities across the nation have done it.

. . .

Daniela found the situation "pretty weird" but said it hadn't soured her on reopening the lemonade stand.

For the full story, see:

The Fresno Bee. "City puts squeeze on pint-size purveyor of lemonade." Omaha World-Herald (Sun., Aug. 9, 2009): 5A.

(Note: ellipses added.)

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"ROYAL SUBJECTS; Donna Farmer, with her children, applauds Disney's efforts." Source of photo and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

In Gary Becker's initially controversial doctoral dissertation, he argued that those who discriminate in the labor market pay a price for their prejudice: they end up paying higher wages, than do those employers are not prejudiced.

The bottom line is that the free market provides incentives for the encouragement of diversity and tolerance.

Similarly, Donna Farmer argues, in the passages below, that the marketplace provides the Disney company with incentives to have "The Princess and the Frog" appeal to black audiences.

(p. 1) "THE Princess and the Frog" does not open nationwide until December, but the buzz is already breathless: For the first time in Walt Disney animation history, the fairest of them all is black.

. . .

After viewing some photographs of merchandise tied to the movie, which is still unfinished, Black Voices, a Web site on AOL dedicated to African-American culture, faulted the prince's relatively light skin color. Prince Naveen hails from the fictional land of Maldonia and is voiced by a Brazilian actor; Disney says that he is not white.

"Disney obviously doesn't think a black man is worthy of the title of prince," Angela Bronner Helm wrote March 19 on the site. "His hair and features are decidedly non-black. This has left many in the community shaking (p. 8) their head in befuddlement and even rage."

Others see insensitivity in the locale.

"Disney should be ashamed," William Blackburn, a former columnist at The Charlotte Observer, told London's Daily Telegraph. "This princess story is set in New Orleans, the setting of one of the most devastating tragedies to beset a black community."

ALSO under scrutiny is Ray the firefly, performed by Jim Cummings (the voice of Winnie the Pooh and Yosemite Sam). Some people think Ray sounds too much like the stereotype of an uneducated Southerner in an early trailer.

Of course, armchair critics have also been complaining about the princess. Disney originally called her Maddy (short for Madeleine). Too much like Mammy and thus racist. A rumor surfaced on the Internet that an early script called for her to be a chambermaid to a white woman, a historically correct profession. Too much like slavery.

And wait: We finally get a black princess and she spends the majority of her time on screen as a frog?

. . .

Donna Farmer, a Los Angeles Web designer who is African-American and has two children, applauded Disney's efforts to add diversity.

"I don't know how important having a black princess is to little girls -- my daughter loves Ariel and I see nothing wrong with that -- but I think it's important to moms," she said.

"Who knows if Disney will get it right," she added. "They haven't always in the past, but the idea that Disney is not bending over backward to be sensitive is laughable. It wants to sell a whole lot of Tiana dolls and some Tiana paper plates and make people line up to see Tiana at Disney World."

For the full article, see:

BROOKS BARNES. "Her Prince Has Come. Critics, Too." The New York Times, SundayStyles Section (Sun., May 31, 2009): 1, 8-9.

(Note: ellipses added.)

The published version of Becker's doctoral dissertation is:

Becker, Gary S. The Economics of Discrimination. 2nd Rev ed, Economic Research Studies. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1971.

Movie still of Princess Tiana from Disney's "The Princess and the Frog" to be released in December 2009. Source of movie still: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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"William H. Davidow, a venture capitalist, says he would want to know why an entrepreneur's last deal failed "and what the person learned from it." " Source of photo and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited below.

The research reported below, goes against the conclusions of some (such as Christensen and Raynor) that entrepreneurs often learn useful lessons from their failures. However, if true, the research has interesting policy implications.

For instance, if it is true that entrepreneurs who have succeeded in the past, are also more likely to succeed in the future, then it makes sense to allow them to keep the wealth from their entrepreneurship. In that case, the wealth is not only an incentive and reward for hard work, and taking risks. It also provides them the seed-funds for ever-more ambitious future entrepreneurial efforts that have a better-than-average chance of success. E.g., the profits from Disney's cartoon movies, were crucial for funding Disneyland.

(The Gompers et al research is consistent with one of Edwin Mansfield's papers, that I think I mention in my review of Mansfield's contributions to the economics of technology.)

(p. 3) Professor Gompers and his co-authors Anna Kovner, Josh Lerner and David S. Scharfstein found that first-time entrepreneurs who received venture capital funding had a 22 percent chance of success. Success was defined as going public or filing to go public; Professor Gompers says the results were similar when using other measures, like acquisition or merger.

Already-successful entrepreneurs were far more likely to succeed again: their success rate for later venture-backed companies was 34 percent. But entrepreneurs whose companies had been liquidated or gone bankrupt had almost the same follow-on success rate as the first-timers: 23 percent.

In other words, trying and failing bought the entrepreneurs nothing -- it was as if they never tried. Or, as Professor Gompers puts it, "for the average entrepreneur who failed, no learning happened."

This finding flies in the face of conventional wisdom in Silicon Valley, where failure is regarded as an important opportunity for learning. No less an authority than Gordon Moore, a co-founder of Intel, says that in the Valley, "You're more valuable because of the experiences you've been through under failures."

For the full article, see:

LESLIE BERLIN. "Prototype; Try, Try Again, or Maybe Not." The New York Times, SundayBusiness Section (Sun., March 22, 2009): 3.

The research by Gompers et al, can be downloaded from:

Gompers, Paul A., Anna Kovner, Josh Lerner, and David S. Scharfstein. "Performance Persistence in Entrepreneurship." Harvard Business School Working Paper, No. 09-028, 2008.

"Mark Pincus, who founded Tribe.net and then Zynga, says: "As an entrepreneur, you have to get used to failure. It is just part of the path to success." " Source of photo and caption: online version of the NYT article quoted and cited above.

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Source of book image: http://ebooks-imgs.connect.com/ebooks/product/400/000/000/000/000/035/806/400000000000000035806_s4.jpg

(p. 275) The popularity of the creative arts, and the influence they exert, will depend ultimately on their quality and allure, on the delight and excitement they generate, and on demotic choices. Picasso set his faith against nature, and burrowed within himself. Disney worked with nature, stylizing it, anthropomorphizing it, and surrealizing it, but ultimately reinforcing it. That is why his ideas form so many powerful palimpsests in the visual vocabulary of the world in the early twenty-first century, and will continue to shine through, while the ideas of Picasso, powerful though they were for much of the twentieth century, will gradually fade and seem outmoded, as representational art returns to favor. In the end nature is the strongest force of all.

Source:

Johnson, Paul M. Creators: From Chaucer and Durer to Picasso and Disney. New York: HarperCollins, 2006.

(Note: I am grateful to John Devereux for telling me about Paul Johnson's views on Picasso and Disney.)

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Source of book image:
http://bp2.blogger.com/_Sar8IPNlxOY/SClPS33oTxI/AAAAAAAAB_0/B8GjajHtetY/s1600/PixarTouch.jpg

(p. A19) One of Mr. Catmull's other inspirations was to hire computer animator John Lasseter after he was fired by Walt Disney Co. in 1983. (He had apparently stepped on one too many toes in the company's sprawling management structure.) Then again, as Mr. Price reports, in the world of computer animators, workplace comings and goings seemed to be part of the job. Mr. Lasseter himself had already quit Disney and then returned before being fired. In the creative ferment of computer animation in the late 1970s and early 1980s, what mattered most was the work itself: Never mind who signs the paychecks - what project are you working on now?

. . .

One of Pixar's first projects revealed a truth that would point the way to success: Storytelling is more important than graphics firepower. The company created a short film, directed by Mr. Lasseter, called "Tin Toy," about a mechanical one-man band fleeing the terrors of a baby who wants to play with it. "Tin Toy" made audiences laugh in part because it turned established themes on their heads. The story was told from the toy's-eye view, close to the floor. The baby, doing what babies do, seemed like a gigantic, capricious monster. "Tin Toy" won the 1988 Academy Award for animated short film.

The upside-down "Tin Toy" point of view seems to fit much of what happened at Pixar afterward. The company made a deal with Disney in 1991: The little animation outfit would produce three movies, and the entertainment behemoth would distribute and market them. With the outsize success of the first movie in the deal, "Toy Story" - it grossed $355 million world-wide - Pixar and Disney were perhaps on an inevitable collision course over control and profits. Mr. Price adroitly depicts the clashes between Mr. Jobs and his nemesis at Disney, chief executive Michael Eisner, and captures the sweet vindication of Mr. Lasseter as the projects he guides outstrip the animation efforts of his former employer.

The sweetest moment in the Pixar saga came two years ago, when Disney bought the company for $7.4 billion in an all-stock deal - one that gave Pixar executives enormous power at their new home. Mr. Jobs sits on the Disney board and is the company's largest shareholder. (Mr. Eisner left in 2005.) And Mr. Lasseter became the chief creative officer for the combined Disney and Pixar animation studios, where Mr. Catmull serves as president.

The day after the sale was announced, Mr. Lasseter and Mr. Catmull flew to Burbank, Calif., to address a crowd of about 500 animation staffers on a Disney soundstage. "Applause built as they made their way to the front," Mr. Price reports, "and then erupted again in force" when the two men were introduced. "Lasseter was welcomed as a rescuer of the studio from which he had been fired some twenty-two years before." In one of their first moves, Mr. Price says, Messrs. Lasseter and Catmull "brought back a handful of Disney animation standouts who had only recently been laid off." Redemption, after all, is essential to any story well told.

For the full review, see:

PAUL BOUTIN. "Bookshelf, An Industry Gets Animated." The Wall Street Journal (Weds., May 14, 2008): A19.

(Note: ellipsis added.)

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Mr. Lessig has become the standard-bearer for those who see copyright law as too protective of original creators and too stifling of the artists who follow them. That position has made him the darling of those who want a relatively unfettered Internet, whether it be music sharers or online poem reprinters.

But it has also made him an opponent of many big media companies, including the Walt Disney Company, whose signature creation, Mickey Mouse, would have passed into the public domain years ago if not for a series of well-timed extensions to the law.

. . .

. . . , it might surprise many of Mr. Lessig’s supporters to find that his inspiration for his copyright work was Ronald Reagan.

“I heard George Shultz give a talk in Berlin on the 20th anniversary of Reagan’s ‘tear down this wall’ speech,” Mr. Lessig said. “It was very moving to be at this event. Many of the Germans in the audience were moved to tears. They said that at the time this happened, it was impossible to see this change happening.”

In recalling his thoughts on the possibility of communism falling, he said, “When I heard Reagan’s speech, I remember thinking, ‘boy, he is crazy,’ ” he said.

It is fair to say you can quote him on that.

For the full story, see: 

NOAM COHEN.  "LINK BY LINK; Taking the Copyright Fight Into a New Arena."  The New York Times   (Mon., July 2, 2007):  C3.

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