ep 18 – Creators, Creativity, and Technology with Bob Iger

Transcript

welcome to web3 with Asics and z a show about building the next generation of the internet from the team at Asics and C crypto hosted by editor-in-chief sonal choxie that's me and also with occasional co-host founding General partner Chris Dixon in this special holiday episode Chris and I interview Bob Iger as we've been spending a lot of time thinking about what's next in media as enabled by new technologies so it was an honor for us to sit down and chat with Bob in an intimate conversation recorded in La a few months ago Bob probably needs no introduction but after this chat took place it was recently announced that he was returning to Disney still just to highlight more about his background as relevant to this conversation as a longtime CEO of Disney

Bob was responsible for among many other things leading the Acquisitions of Pixar Marvel lucasfilm and more he also navigated questions at many company Builders of all sizes space like whether to build versus buy or how to navigate the innovators dilemma and disrupt oneself Bob was also previously the head of ABC entertainment and he is the author of the book ride of a lifetime which we reference throughout this episode as a reminder none of the following is investment business legal or tax advice please see asicsency.com disclosures for more important information anyway our wide-ranging conversation covers the interplay between technology content and distribution and Bob's journey and that of various creators throughout

especially as the arc parallels the evolution from TV and cable to the Advent of the internet and web 1.0 to 2.0 to very briefly touching on web 3. we also discuss business models like advertising and distribution models like streaming and we end with a quick tour through emerging Technologies like VR and AR but we begin with the very top of Mind topic of focusing on creators including the question of what's different about managing creatives it's been 13 years since Disney bought Marvel like why can't the competitors this has always puzzled me they've got hundreds of millions of dollars they can hire whoever they want like why can't they replicate the success of Marvel when I ran Disney I always found that focusing

too much on the competition was not healthy but always created anxiety for me first of all it's people you have to choose the right people and I'm not just talking about a director that's obviously important because you don't get a good movie without a good director but it's management to supervise it's people who understand just to give you an idea in a lot of cases in movies a movie studio will make a decision that they're making a film and actually slot it onto a calendar into a schedule and say well this is going to come out in July of 2023 and off they go it's very rare that a studio will say in the middle of a production process this movie is not as good as we needed to be we're going to wait and so they force

things into the marketplace before they are fully baked basically it's a lack of commitment to Excellence and I'm a big believer in the Relentless pursuit of perfection Steve Jobs a great role model there and realize no one's ever going to criticize a movie that's great for coming out late that certainly will criticize a movie if it's bad it comes out on time yeah and what happens with these companies often is they think about a movie's going to come out in a quarter and we have to make our quarter and we got to get the box office and that's the tail wagon the dog well and also like a lot of these execs isn't like the average relatively short they're under pressure from Wall Street and the board and they may not be able to even if they want to even manage to a

long-term yeah I think that probably plays into it a bit yeah but there's a whole other side too and that is the management of the creatives I hired Alan horn in 2012. I remember the day he came in June of 2012 I said I've got a really big secret to share with you he thought he's coming to Disney to manage Marvel and Pixar and Disney and I said we're on the eve of announcing the acquisition of lucasfilm he said you're kidding I said no he said that's the greatest thing I've ever heard Alan horn was the kind of Studio executive that knew how to manage creative talent and not just creative talent but the talent that manages creative Talent yes yes exactly oh God yes which is you figure out how to

insert yourself into a process in a benign way where you're you're looking over people's shoulder but you're not making them feel paranoid you're giving them advice on what to consider but you're not ordering them to change things you're being patient and you're also understanding the anxiety that they feel and you're not trying to add to build onto it or to exacerbate it it's fascinating I engaged a lot in the big movies I read scripts I looked at early rough Cuts there were a couple of times I went into edit room so it very rarely very rarely because just wasn't my role but when you look at something and you have to give critical feedback to someone is a way to do that Bob actually could we pause here

because I want to ask you more about this because this was literally the part of your book I love the best and the reason I think it's important for our audience as well is because I think a lot of technology companies don't actually know that they're creative companies first and this is a huge shift that's happening right now and so I want specifics on some of your Lessons Learned for managing creatives and creative Management in particular because the point about feedback is literally one of my favorite points so tell us more about managing creatives sure I think the first thing you have to do when you manage creators is to put yourself in the shoes of the person who's the creator and realize the idea typically Has Come From Within them it's part of their almost their fabric it's who they are in a way not only they have

a sense of ownership but it's very much tied to their self-esteem how they feel about themselves and you can't dismiss that you have to really understand that oftentimes Executives try to exert their Authority or show who's boss you don't do that either it's not about that it's not about coming in and having the big title it's about trying to establish in the most sincere genuine way a partnership I come in peace I just want to help I'd like to give you my perspective not tell you what to do just like to give you some thoughts that I have about what you just showed me some of it sounds like common sense but there's always ego on the line is it ego but like let me just play Devil's Advocate someone else might argue well we do have to make you know we have a

budget we have to make this schedule and these creative people are running around listen I do believe that managing creativity responsibly for your shareholders is really important you can't allow just want and spending or allow creative is to take how much time they want some do by the way some have earned the right to do that Jim Cameron's a good example of that I respect Jim immensely his next Avatar movie is coming out under the 21st century Studios Banner but owned by Disney because of the deal that was made in 2019. Jim Cameron makes movies on his own timetable you cannot impose your own calendar on Jim Cameron you have to know that as a studio and if you don't then

it's your fault then what happens ultimately is tension what do you mean you're not going to deliver it by this date and then that relationship starts to rupture you just have to know what you're getting into so there's that there's also just how do you actually articulate feedback about creativity I'd often find Executives would think if they talked about minute details that the Creator would think wow what a sharp eye that person has they notice this little detail in this image in this film wow the opposite is the case to the Creator that that's trivial that's meaningless what are you doing what are you wasting my time telling me that the color of the sky is too pink or whatever but I've seen Executives do that because they want to show that they're looking

they're watching I like to always go in and be really big in terms of my thoughts I think you've got a good movie and it's a great story but it's not as digestible or understandable as I would like it to be let me tell you what I didn't understand I might have missed something but let me articulate it it's that simple or the pacing is off for me it feels a little slow it dragged in spots they may ask well is there a spot in particular that you felt that you'd have to back it up this particular act it's not getting too granular but it's saying this is where I thought it slowed down and often the Creator will say oh that's interesting I'm going to take a look at that again well it sounds like you're giving authentic feedback as opposed to

kind of fake experts yeah correct or just trying to use your Authority and actually letting the creative diagnose how to solve the problem instead of like micro like saying let's do this this and this the other thing you have to realize is know when to stop when the creator has absorbed enough has heard enough they don't really want any of that some of them some of them invited some don't really want it but stop and often I try to read the body language and when I did stop I'd say you know I have a couple of other thoughts I'll send you an email we'll have Alan horn do it and then often sometimes it's hard you try to lead with something positive if you could see the worst cut of the worst film and you don't know what to do the lights would come up in the screening

room at Disney and then invariably I'd have to say the first thing I think oh my goodness how am I gonna okay how am I going to deal with this but I tried really hard to say something nice first even if it was transparent that I was doing that because it just puts people at ease and in some cases it was great like when I watched black panther for the first time Ryan coogler who was not even 33 directed two other films Fruitvale Station and Creed comes in and he's made this big film first big film he ever made he barely knew me he's obviously intimidated because of my title I could tell he was nervous and I had to say something first and the first

thing I said to him is Ryan I've got some things I want to tell you about the movie that I just detected or felt but I gotta say one thing you made a great film here and it just like oh my goodness you could just see the anxiety just yeah exactly poor out of people at ease and that gave me license then to say some things he's still euphoric and it wasn't manipulative I truly meant it but I knew that if I didn't put him at ease first everything I said was going to bother that was an earlier version of it it was the very early version it says it changed a lot interestingly enough it was clear that the changes that we felt that could be made were going to cost money there had

already been a big debate about the budget of the film I think 175 million and people saying that in all black cast Never resonated in certain parts of the world like China and therefore 175 million on this film is a huge risk well we're not going to give the black director a smaller budget yeah to make this film I felt very strongly about that but I also knew that this was a great story you could tell in the script and deserve the budget to become a great and you also actually accelerated it in the slate in your book you talk about how you tried prioritizing that is one of the things that could come out sooner I think I must say I don't remember the timing but what I do remember is in thinking about the changes that could be made to turn this into a true

not only hit but phenomenal film it was going to cost money and we were clear with him right away to spend what you need to make this better the rest is history on that one that's great on the last note on feedback the other thing you said and this is the part that actually resonated with me I'm glad you read my book I haven't read it in a while I mean I read the entire thing very quickly it was a specific details that stood out and the one that really stood out to me here was not to be Petty with your feedback like you already alluded to this already when you said not to focus on minutiae but I literally had someone call me like two weeks ago because big tech companies they're launching a new podcast and the first piece of feedback this person gave to

her creative was yeah the music seems kind of off and I was like that's literally where you started that's probably the worst thing to do and it was like so relevant to what you say in your book yeah only say things that will really make a big difference well the big Visionary stuff first which I thought was a really interesting thing the petty stuff never there were times when I had a list that was three pages long small stuff that I just can essentially it's a little bit like my business and Venture Capital where I have a rule where I basically never give specific product feedback to entrepreneurs I don't know that yeah well because I used to be an entrepreneur and these VCS would come in and they would say you know move this button and like we had a person on the team who spent four months on the layout

of that page and the other problem right is that what you don't realize is an investor yeah is that will then propagate down through the company exactly and it really was just one person's opinion but suddenly it becomes like a board mandate right yeah and so like that's why I just don't want to do it because sure I have thoughts but I don't want it to be seen as like a investor mandate like the colors off or this is silly because I'm not an expert on college but it's interesting though conversely yeah having worked with Steve much as I did he did believe that Details Matter yes and that a collection of details which can be small in nature actually made a big difference and so the question is I mean I mean he's such a special I don't know the books where he's sitting in there going through

every pixel yeah yeah well I remember you would take me to the Pixar Design Lab yeah and take the blankets off the design tables and under the blankets with the new products and at one point I think I might have described this in the book but if I didn't I've described it other times he made me put my ear down to the where the power cord touches the laptop and it was then they were using the mag connector and you could hear the click of the magnet and the click and he admitted about 10 times both our ears down there click click click he says you hear that and it was clear it's really making him feel good but you're making a key Point here Bob because there is a paradox you're right with how do you focus on details and not pettiness and there's a difference between the two and

I think you're right Chris like Steve Jobs is an example of someone who's earned the right to be focusing on minije because he's such a Visionary the problem that I see with a lot of tech people who do this is sometimes where people who come into a room they'll sort of act like they're Visionaries like Steve Jobs but they're actually not and then they focus on the minutiae and you're kind of looking at them like yeah I don't really I think it's I think it's Steve earned the right yeah yeah and I think what you were saying I guess I think of it as the feedback should sort of correspond the person's expertise yes exactly right the person has earned the right yeah that's right because of experienced knowledge that he's been proven right and not just hierarchy it's not hardly yeah not just the third

Authority right exactly I'm glad we talked about that we can segue to other topics before your guyses pivot because later on we'll come to Disney plus great so Bob you became the CEO of Disney in 2005 and you had a career at ABC and a long media career can you kind of give us a picture of what the media world was like at the time sure it's really interesting looking back because 2005 there were forces of disruption that were already impacting the business but it was still relatively superficial web 1.0 and the internet growth that we were seeing by then was starting to have impact on a variety of different things including consumer Behavior but not nearly as much obviously as we've seen

but it was clear that the promise of the internet was vast and I think that there was anxiety that was just starting to build in the industry and people running traditional media companies were being asked to be Visionaries and how were they going to one contend with that disruption and to really how would they thrive in a newly disrupted world my recollection was you had the really obviously the big kind of bubble in the 90s and then you had the backlash this from my perspective in the tech industry 2001 to three or four but by five like I think Google might have gone public the downturn might have been overstated yeah and Broadband penetration was increasing

yeah yeah yeah and people just use of new technologies even though really was not the era of mobile technology yeah but using new technologies was growing like crazy and people were spending time and money on those Technologies so you kind of knew it was important but not necessarily specifically how yet correct but the board of directors of the Walt Disney Company wanted to know when they were interviewing me to become CEO what my plan was what would my priorities be what would I do and what I articulated was that I saw a world where technology was going to create a proliferation of distribution and really of consumer opportunity to access consume by media and entertainment

and as I looked ahead at a world where there was so much more distribution I also saw a world where there'd be a lot more production or creativity and a lot more consumption I thought okay well if the world is going to expand or even explode like that how does a company like Disney play or or really thrive in that world and what hit me was that great content high quality creativity and branded content would stand the test of time no matter what disruptive forces impacted the business in other words people would seek out Best Brands best content best experiences no matter how they were getting them and we should

worry less about the distribution and more about what we were creating I always think of it tell me if this is naive but I think if there's an ebb and flow in the media business between the relative strength of content distribution and so maybe one way of saying what you saw was that as the supply of distribution went up The Leverage of the distribution side would decrease relative to content well what I was actually declaring was that there's an ebb and flow in terms of the debate but there really shouldn't be a debate that the content side would always win out okay because creative brilliant people is just a fundamentally scarce resource find their way to the consumer and the consumer will find their way to Brilliance no matter what and we were way too paranoid about the forces of distribution basically ruining our

business and remember cable and satellite was still growing like crazy yeah and then of course there was concern that the web browser would ultimately become another form of consumption and distribution that's interesting so another strategy would have been to sort of run around trying to own these different new forms of distribution you said no I mean obviously you'd do some of that but your priority the content side well at that point what I declared because there had been a debate at Disney for the decade prior should we own distribution should we invest our capital in that direction I shut that argument down right away said no it's all about one thing high quality branded entertainment and I described Disney obviously as just that high quality branded entertainment but

we had to invest even more of our money our time resources in that because again it would stand the test of time and interestingly enough Walt Disney proved that in ways that were so obvious to us he makes Snow White in 1937 and in 2005 it's still being consumed by kids around the world in the form of at that point I think it was just DVDs really I guess Blu-ray was just coming into play at that point when you think about that you think wow that was only movie theater distributed in 1937 it went through an era of TV in the 50s and the 60s and then it ends up in a home video Forum that's kind of telling it doesn't matter what the technology is it's going to get

that product to people it's about the product itself and so I made that case loud and clear I articulated it as the company's number one priority invest in high quality branded content period can you break down high quality means premium like you spend a lot of money on it or just high does that mean you don't like you don't do low end tv shows or well it means you tell great stories doesn't everyone like what do you not do like doesn't everyone try to do that like is it isn't that everyone I think to do that but they don't create processes okay that result in that I see they rush things into the marketplace meaning they don't take the time they get impatient they don't manage the creative Community well they

don't take risks on new ideas that sound odd but could be great they don't know how to process failure in creativity which is interesting because one of the things I'm seeing today is there's so much anxiety over transformation and disruption that companies managing creative processes are transferring that anxiety to the creative community oh guys there's already basically an embedded anxiety don't make it worse so I just felt that there were ways operational kind of thing that you build into the company yes it's very cultural and so here we are in 2005 I make that declaration I look at Disney and see where are the deficiencies one of the

biggest was Disney Animation which had powered the company starting with Walt in 1923 when he founded it and if you looked at the years prior when Disney Animation was great the company was great because it had such a massive effect on company perception brand perception of course on Commerce and then the way Walt created the company was if you create great IP it's leverageable in consumer products and theme parks and music and yeah Etc and so on why it lost its way do you think there were a lot of reasons there was a process problem I could get really granular but um you do have a great write-up about it in your book I spent a lot of time I thought you had a great line I think which was where animation goes is where Disney goes yeah and that

was very true at that point and so I thought okay number one priority Under the Umbrella of the Strategic priority that just articulates fixed Disney Animation how do I do that great people where are the great people they're all working for Pixar we didn't have them and then it just happened at the time that a long-term partnership that Michael Eisner had created which was a co-ownership co-funding of their movies was ending and Steve who having declared that Disney was over and he was done with them so Not only was Disney Animation at sea but the relationship with Pixar which had driven some pretty good Commerce for Disney even though it was only then 2005 10 years old was ending so I thought okay I got to get

the relationship with Pixar back but I also have to fix Disney Animation the light bulb that went off was what if we buy Pixar which was a crazy idea because it wasn't for sale all roads had to go through they were public and worth they were public 6 billion or something we paid seven plus billion dollars for it I don't remember what they were traded they were expensive and very expensive they weren't for sale Steve owned half the stock okay and they were unhappy with Disney correct and they were really unhappy and didn't your board even say can't you just acquire John Lasseter and like the talent and we were like yeah that's not happening just by John Lassiter John loved Disney but he didn't want to work out exactly and that's actually part of the point because the creatives didn't actually work for Disney at that time they worked for

Pixar so what happened was I in my first board meeting as CEO after they chose me I showed them 10 years of Disney Animation failure and told them this had to be fixed because it conformed to my strategy but I went through the process that I had gone through in my head which is who to identify to do it and I said well roads lead to Pixar I said the problem is that we can't pluck those people out of Pixar too hard and that they're not for sale and if they are it'll be terribly expensive I think the board was so blown away by the craziness of the idea that they didn't say yes and they didn't say no they just felt this is so crazy it's never going to happen and I read that as what I call an amber light which is they're not putting a red

light in front of me don't do it they're certainly not putting a green light in front of it do it but again I think because they were just so shocked at the thought they weren't really focused on how we're going to contend with this of course in my case I had a head of steam I was a brand new CEO my wife told me I wasn't going to last more than three and a half years if I didn't do something really bold which is good advice so I picked the phone call Steve Jobs with a crazy idea that was in October of 05 and we announced the deal I think in the first week in February just a few months later how did you fix things I was lucky really lucky before I became CEO I spent some time with him didn't get that far because he just viewed me

as one of the Disney bureaucrats but I I at least showed him interest in curiosity in apple and what he was doing and before I made the call on Pixar there was a six month period where I was named CEO but I was waiting for my predecessor michaelizer to leave which was planned I called Steve and I said I have a crazy idea my first crazy idea and that was to create a television version of iTunes he had had you know it was created this with almost find every song that you and you ever wanted to find in one place I thought why don't we do that with TV shows why don't we go back to I Love Lucy and you name it put all TV shows in one place and that point I'm thinking about basically web

distribution I was not thinking about any mobile distribution because the iPod at the time didn't have a screen on it Heathen said I'm going to come down and see you he comes down takes a prototype of the iPod with a video screen on it shows it to me which in a way was the precursor to the iPhone there's a postage stamp screen on he said you see this I said yes he said this is a screen I could tell this doesn't just show the name of songs it will play video if we put this out he was already planning to announce it would you put your TV shows on it I said yes in five days we made a deal he could not believe that a traditional Media Company would be willing to disrupt itself so much by

taking shows lost Desperate Housewives and Gray's Anatomy and putting them on the video iPod and I think that changed his perception of me tremendously because one I cut through all the red tape got a deal done too I showed a willingness to be future oriented and willing to disrupt ourselves three I was interested in apple he knew I showed him playlists we started talking about music we hit it off and then when I called him about the Pixar acquisition he at that point was viewing me as a much different executive than he expected so we bought Pixar I assigned the people who ran Pixar John Lasseter and Ed catmore to

run Disney animation with a goal to turn Disney Animation around which if you look back on what they did it's just extraordinary because it was Moana and Tangled and Frozen and zootopia because those were in Disney but under Pixar some of them were not even gestated they were developed by them some were in a early pipeline but very early so you bought them and then put them in charge of both of Disneyland come down every week and turn that place around and so they started to do that and we also proved pretty early on that we were good stewards of Pixar too that one we were benign we wouldn't do any harm and two we were incredibly supportive and most important was we were respectful of

their culture and that's really important when it comes to creativity yeah exactly it was a different creative culture than Disney highly not even close not even close very creative that's why you didn't try to fold Pixar into Disney Animation correct although we we ended up adopting a lot of Pixar's creative processes I'll just give you one example at Pixar every movie that they made was basically driven from the idea of a director director pitches the idea Pixar says we like your idea go make your movie they go and make the movie there's a passion that exists deep with inside that director that is evident in every single step of production create activity of that film from when it just starts to basically be born to when it starts to grow and be

shared with the world at Disney's case we assigned ideas to directors so director would be brought in to direct a movie with someone else's idea and the connection didn't exist the passion didn't exist that's one there were other little things even logistically at Pixar every movie got assigned a room basically a nice conference room the movie lived in that room full-time the director and the team put pictures up all around the walls had music that was referenced to the movie they did all of their meetings about the film in this room the movie started taking on kind of a tangible quality of actually existing in a space where at Disney we had one room that all the movies shared one movie comes in for a few hours as a meeting does something they move out

another one comes in that's subtle really subtle but a sense of place and home and Collegiate I love that collegial feeling I mean I had gone up to picture I could not believe what I saw I go into the Wally room and the up room one day I see Ratatouille Wally up Brave was another movie they made two others that I went into rooms the movies never got made one was about a blue-footed nude that was getting your Extinction and the other one was about pets that lived in a building on the upper west side of Manhattan that didn't get made interestingly enough I still remember it so well by the way it was so obvious to me yeah a film that feels

like it has a home and the people that first of all they become part of the film yeah there's a sense of players it starts actually to become I use the word tangible it comes to life I don't think I've ever really told that I love that so anyway then I looked at their technology platform and they take me through not what they were using to make CGI films then but what would be the next generation of them and it was shocking to me what they showed because they started off as a tech company right now yeah Ed Campbell's computer scientist and they showed me a technology that enabled a director and a team to edit through space and through time in ways that were vastly different than what I had seen before essentially it was an ability to change an image a very very specific image within an

overall image and the change that was made would basically apply to the whole movie was plucking something out interesting a moment and that hadn't existed before find and replace for like an animation which seems completely Cutting Edge and it was cutting edge it became the next generation of Pixar technology so you can imagine just how blown away I was by all of this and then when it worked we closed the deal for them in 2006 Success Through 2009 if I remember correctly cars in Ratatouille ratatouillon cars and Wally and up just amazing stuff original ideas interesting and then so then after that was Marvel

well we had had a process at Disney where we looked at potential Acquisitions we basically called it an acquisition filter or sieve with you know definitions of what we might want and what we wouldn't want and what would be left what would make it through the filter and there was a list of things that made it through and one was Star Wars or lucasfilm one was Marvel there were a few others at the time and so I looked at the team and we thought okay you know what's next and interestingly enough my first thought was Star Wars and I knew George Lucas Wells Steve knew George very well because he bought Pixar from George people forget it yeah and we didn't get a chance to schedule a meeting with

George because Steve was sick and this is 2009 when he has liver transplant so we put that on the back burner to wait because Steve wanted to meet with George and I to talk about it so while we're waiting for that to happen we spent months trying to get to the head of Marvel and in June of 2009 I walked into Marvel's office in New York alone pitched the idea about buying Marvel told a Pixar story ultimately got Steve Jobs on the phone to tell how great the relationship had been offered Disney stock which was I had proven already to Steve how valuable that could be Steve got Disney stock at 28 a share 135 million shares of it and we ended up closing the deal for Marvel and

announcing at the end of August in 09 and then we were Off to the Races there and did you have I mean there were obviously superhero movies like Iron Man but it was nothing like today right like it was not they had only put one movie out Iron Man yeah and that gave birth to got a slew of things yeah interestingly enough I was never a comic book fan my dad wouldn't let me read Comics because they were frivolous but I was aware of the passion that people had for comic books and in the process of considering Marvel I studied the business pretty closely and the one thing that I realized is that the stories that had been told already were so voluminous and over years well this is interesting there's a treasure Trove here because some of the outsiders who were critical

of the deal so the company's already licensed a bunch of the characters right well so what was licensed was Spider-Man was licensed to Sony and Iron Man had been made by Paramount yeah and Universal had Hulk that was it but then when we did the due diligence first the team said there were 5 000 characters I said wow then they came back and said no sorry there was 7 200 of them so I thought well it has to be characters that are as good as some of these others who are in the right creative hands we can make them good I just thought okay if you can make a good Iron Man a good Spider-Man you can make a good Captain America we weren't thinking Captain America we weren't thinking Thor we weren't thinking Captain Marvel we weren't thinking black panther we weren't thinking about any of these

characters Guardians of the Galaxy which existed came from a whole other group of characters let's tell great stories and like Pixar they had a core creative team that was really impressive led by Kevin foggy who's still at Disney I always thought this can't just be about an acquisition it has to be about your ability to execute and that's people and creating a culture that enables them to thrive and giving them the resources which includes not just money but marketing support and distribution help and bringing things to Market in a much more impactful way so trust the creative team at Marvel give them the basically as much fuel as they need to make great things and the next thing you know they come in and

they pitch this wild Five-Year Plan where we're going to introduce Thor Captain America this is the MCU yeah and they make individual moves each of those and then we'll put them all together in one called The Avengers which had been a comic book and the rest is history just to pause there for quick moment just to give the listeners context this is very different than Pixar in a few ways because in your book you describe how not only does Marvel have its own characters but you made it very honestly kind of amazingly controversial decision not to co-brand that as Disney overtly when you put the movies out so I think that's kind of important context there these weren't just superhero movies these were Marvel movies and it was

putting a spotlight on the Marvel Brand changing even the look and feel of the logo and reminding everybody Captain America is Marvel so that you build the brand with the characters and the stories on underneath it which gives you the license to try new characters and stories that you say that's how you get to do Guardians of the Galaxy is it something crazy new but people know it's Marvel exactly and so they go see it black panther another great example of that this is Marvel's Black Panther yeah the second big contrast between the Pixar deal and this one is that Pixar where you did outline a case to your board that you know this brand is actually outpacing our brand like people actually think about Pixar before they think about Disney that wasn't necessarily the case with Marvel with

Marvel it seemed like there was more of a like what how does this even fit yeah because it's even Disney interesting because Marvel had been considered as an acquisition by Disney in earlier years and was considered too edgy and I thought well that's because people are thinking it has to be Disney's Marvel let Wall Street think of it that way yeah but not the consumer I felt that Marvel was another Disney and that we shouldn't worry again I wanted the value generated to be considered by Wall Street it didn't matter whether the consumers knew whether it was owned by Disney or not and so same thing is true by the way with ESPN and you could argue ABC News and other brands too it just didn't matter strengthen that brand and then end up with a collection of them and let each basically consumer of those

Brands know exactly what they are if I'm don't make it all conflict so continue your thoughts so the next thing that happened is I went back to that acquisition filter and there was lucasfilm still sitting there with Star Wars and Steve at that point was really ill he died in October of 2011 so the the dream that he and I had had about having lunch with George Lucas was over I went down to Orlando to reopen Star Tours attraction that we had redone which I wouldn't normally have done but I knew George was going to be there and I thought this is my opportunity and George and Melody Hopson who was then his fiancee and I had breakfast and I broached the subject with him using

Pixar as a great example in Marvel and he says I don't like comic books he he was not a comic book fan either he and I had a great relationship going back to him making young Indiana Jones for ABC and he said well if I ever sell I'm not ready to sell but if I ever do I want to sell to you gotta let that go I dropped it I wasn't going to put a hard sell on them because I knew that wouldn't work and I waited and then he ended up calling me some months later and said I want to talk to you about that idea clearly I had struck a nerve of some sort a positive one and that resulted in a deal that we announced in 2012.

so we ended up not just with Disney and ESPN and ABC but we ended up with Pixar Marvel and lucasfilm just like that we had more known Brands known for their quality of Storytelling than any other media and entertainment company in the world were there ones that you wanted to acquire that never happened the ones that got away oh I had a list well one James Bond but I never even had a meeting on it a bit of love James Bond and Harry Potter was already gone to Warner Brothers they ended up getting the rights something obviously Disney should have done but didn't so beloved Brands where there's expansion possibilities exactly where you know I always tried to envision our theme parks

and could I see a Marvel world or a Star Wars world or a Toy Story world and all exist today so then after lucasfilm so that was 2012. what was sort of the next big strategic priority what was interesting was I felt at that point maybe we don't have to do anything you know we have such a great hand and I actually spent 2012 to 2016. I spent an inordinate amount of my time developing Shanghai Disneyland yeah which was a not only a pet project of mine but I thought an incredibly important project for Disney and its future in terms of planning a flag on Mainland Chinese soil so we did all that and then of course the Winds of

Change got even more Fierce as the internet 1.0 gave birth in Era 2.0 and app-based entertainment new forms of distribution and that ultimately started my thinking about the streaming but during that period of time it was very very clear that the disruptive forces that I talked about seeing in 2005 had gotten much more profound yeah and and we're starting to impact the entire business and what we were seeing was not just the disruption of distribution but disruptive distribution disrupting essentially almost every area of the business monetization and you know advertising is that mostly Netflix that was sort of the standard Bearer it was

mostly Netflix but it was very very clear that what Netflix was doing would be done by others by well-financed so they were at the frontier but that was going to be the shape of the industry they were shown the way particularly for the big tech companies and what was also happening is the consumer was starting to exert more and more Authority you know one thing we've also seen over this period of time actually you can go all the way back to the oven to the remote control and television is that technology is giving consumers much more Authority and power than ever before switching costs is so easy switching costs between channels between devices but impacting time when do I watch something yeah where where do I watch something how out on a fixed device on

the wall or on your mobile phone all of those things and starting the impact pricing as well but also starting to have a huge impact on linear television watching I don't want to watch program linear channels and I don't really like the user interface the cable and satellite is giving me I love being able to watch programs and I love being able to watch app-based programs going back to the development of Web 2.0 which you know I think apps have proven already that for a consumer they're just fantastic it was a fantastic development and that's Authority I don't want a channel I want a program give me a program boom move a cursor over an icon or whatever you got it so I felt because Disney was so heavily invested in linear

channels ESPN ABC Disney Channel go on and on I worry that that business was going to be replaced by app-based entertainment and we had to be there and we had been the first movie company to license movies to Netflix yes and I realized wow what we've done because Netflix I think if Netflix is a three-act story right it was first the DVDs in the mail and then it was it was internet distribution but mostly license content movies mostly movies movies like from companies like Disney and then the pivot into original content Disney first oh sorry I'm in Netflix Netflix and then you guys pulled it and I have

to say I was pretty pissed when that happened because I was really mad I was like I want to watch my shows on Netflix and you guys took them away yeah I know of course what hit me was a joke about it often is we were selling nuclear weapons technology we were starting to build nuclear weapons to use against us I mean it I think people just didn't think Netflix would have the capability to do that right because it was a they didn't think they had the money yeah they just didn't think they they have it and I think they proved to me anyway that they did so I thought okay we got to go into that business because if we're just going to license to them they're ultimately going to disrupt us fully why was it so obvious too that that was a future like what was it I was

very bold actually one as I was consumer it worked for me that product worked for me second I was tired of on every single earnings call answering the question about what the future of cable and satellite television was and I didn't really want to deal with it anymore I thought well the only way not to deal with it is to say well that's not really where our future is either yeah our future is somewhere else we're going to redirect we're going to change the future was that did that go back to your original because your original Vision when you became CEO was content is King distribution will just be everywhere and so when you saw streaming you're like this is the distribution vehicle of the future and paired with our great content well I knew that our content would thrive in the new distribution thesis

originally was you you would be sort of a distribution agnostic company because you had such great content and look Netflix proved they paid more money for our movies than anybody had ever paid yeah and then anybody was willing to pay at the time so we used to license the HBO and stars and show time Netflix blew them all away so I'm thinking well that says a lot really and then I thought we'll be fine continuing to license to Netflix that goes back to the argument high quality branded content they demanded it they were lusting for it yeah but I thought now we were entering a new technological era where the customer and customer's relationship with the company is potentially value creating meaning if you can strengthen

that relationship you can improve the value of your relationship with a customer if you look at Disney in 2016 17 we started really talking about this the movie theaters own the customer for all of our movies so they're a great Marvel Star Wars Disney fans Pixar fans but the tickets were being sold by Fandango and movie theaters right we had no idea who was watching our movies then we would put the movies on cable and satellite and Netflix we didn't know who was watching there we'd sell consumer products we sell thousands of Spider-Man costumes for Halloween Walmart and Amazon would know who the customers were other than our theme parks we had no customer relationships

we had all this passion the greatest fans in the World Star Wars fans my goodness how passionate are they we had no idea who they were so I thought okay we're losing there's a value proposition there that we're not participating so it was I know our content is going to work on a new technology platform I know that if we control it then the customer will be ours and we can create a deeper more intimate relationship with them and it would also give us the ability to wean ourselves of basically our Reliance on cable and satellite I have two questions here you know earlier when you were saying that you had this very strong belief that content trumps

all tests everything everything distribution Tech everything did you ever doubt that for a moment when you saw that Netflix was doing because there was a point where I doubted it as a consumer because I would lazily comfortably watch Netflix over anything just because even if it was bad content just because it was so cool well I I knew what our movies were doing on that platform they gave us some indication how popular they were they didn't give us too many details which by the way spoke volumes too yeah you don't get the data I knew that Disney Animation particularly particularly musicals yeah was huge on Netflix oh okay and so I never doubted that ultimately creativity and quality and Brands would matter more and it's interesting if you

look at today's world and you look at all the streamers that are out there by the way there are haves and have-nots and the have-nots are going to fall by the wayside and as what do you mean by the have-nots in this context there are streamers that are not going to survive There Will Be Blood to quote the name of a movie they're not going to all make it and the reason is that there are some platforms that don't have the high quality branded content they don't have enough of it and they're not differentiated so not all streamers are created equal and then the other question did you ever have concerns or doubts or fears about being able to shore up on the technology side to pull off streaming yeah to tell us more about that read Hastings from Netflix try to convince me that there's no way we could

do it you won't have the platform you don't know how to manage things like busted credit cards all the issues with Geo targeting and there's so many different factors that we had no ability to do any of that so after I articulated the desire to go into the business we then had to figure out how we're going to execute that and there were a few impediments the biggest impediment was we needed a technology solution to do so right but the other impediment was that we were making all this money from other forms of distribution including licensing movies to Netflix and cable and satellite subscription fees and advertising that we in making this pivot we're going to have to convince Wall Street that it was essential for us to disrupt ourselves The innovator's

Dilemma it was essential for us to reduce Revenue in order to go in this direction which means telling Wall Street okay you've enjoyed all this great profit growth for Disney over would have been a decade that's now going to go in the opposite direction that was hard but on the technology side we immediately started hunting for a solution yeah and it was one thought that we should build and I was told half a billion dollars five years and I said five years as an eternity because I thought this change was going to happen fast so we don't have five years we have to do it faster and then Kevin Mayer Who was running strategic planning for me at the time started looking for opportunities and we invested in a platform that Major League

Baseball had created called bam Tech and by investing we had a path to ultimately buying control and that became the solution ah interesting one quick thing we're on the Strat Planning Group and how you decentralized you have this amazing narrative and that was actually one of my favorite things in the book I mean I don't know if this is a point of it but you have multiple examples of how Disney and ABC before that had to sort of decentralize its own decision making and I want to ask this question for our audience because a lot of people who are in crypto and web 3 think about decentralization first do you have any thoughts on things that you might not give up or things that you would if you were to go through that again well I think sometimes decentralization is misinterpreted to mean Anarchy and it

can't be that pushing down decision making and empowerment and a sense of ownership into organizations important but as long as it generally conforms to what leadership expects or other constituents expect in one and there's a very careful balance I felt for instance at Disney that too many decisions were being made centrally and there wasn't a sense of empowerment or ownership and some people who knew more about their businesses than any Central organization are being deprived of the ability to apply their knowledge so it had to change that said I felt managing the brand and its qualities its attributes had to be done centrally and consistently yep the other point besides

the technology you brought up in your book which I thought was super interesting here is that you also had to shift the company's organizational structure and mindset for instance when you went from licensing revenues to subscribers as a metric that's a really interesting example because it reminds me of what happened in Tech when technology companies went from selling software to going to software as a service they had to shift their entire orgs chart how sales were done how everything was done I mean at a company particularly a successful company every single thing is designed to protect incumbency everything it's compensation it's the relationship with investors it's how executives are being measured what is the definition of success if

you're running a studio the definition of success is what's the box office well suddenly you're saying oh we're going to take some of the movies that you're making we're not going to put them in movie theaters we're going to put it on Disney plus box office goes away by the way that lack of measurement of success also transfers to the creative Community how does the director know or team know their movie is successful or not or creator of a TV series knows about rate makes something so that it gets high ratings that goes away it's no longer about ratings it's about other metrics it reverberates throughout yeah is very very hard so the innovator's Dilemma is very real very tangible I faced it head-on and I learned

kind of the hard way because I sort of took the flag and decided to carry it up the hill and it was a steeper longer Hill than I thought it would be and counted resistance throughout but in the end I had fortunately because of the success of those other Acquisitions and the fact that my strategy articulated in 2005 had worked I had built up a lot of trust yeah not just among the Wall Street Community but the board and in particular my senior team and so it's nice when a leader has the trust of its team even though it may not feel right to them because of how disrupted it is to them if this guy says this is what we're doing and I promise it's going to turn out all right right they believe

you I think yeah I mean I think what's interesting is like I don't know when it was five six years ago when you first did the pivot from the outside I didn't know you I would have assumed Disney would not take the new tech seriously like that's been the successful assumption in the tech community so it does take retail as an example right so Amazon against Barnes Noble against JCPenney against Sears now Walmart and you can pretty reliably predict that the incumbent kind of non-tech competitors will make noises but won't ever really go all in right right like that's a pretty good assumption for example in retail Amazon continues I would argue even like places like Walmart just never really go all in right they're not really willing to give up on their

that's right exactly I didn't know you but I assume the same thing oh here goes Disney we're going to see another Walmart oh ye of little faith and actually and let me take that further the one exception in my mind is Founders founder CEO so you know if you look at I would argue Facebook you know Facebook is the only Tech incumbent right now that's taking web3 and VR and other new areas seriously and the rest I think are kind of not as much and that's because the founder both has the vision but also the gravitas but you weren't a Founder so I think you might be one of the few two cases of uh non-founders non-founder CEO taking on the innovators dilemma and succeeding didn't Disney plus just pass Netflix and subscribers yeah Global subscribers well I appreciate the compliment going back one I strengthened

my conviction I believe there's the right thing to do had the credibility and the fact that he'd already had success maybe helped right had you tried that first would it have been no way yeah yeah the other thing that I was fortunate at the time to have is the board supported me not only do they support me they exhorted us to do it they actually made you go faster is that because they trusted you or they saw the same vision well a couple of them had the same vision and they trusted me I don't know that they were as convinced as I was that we'd be able to execute well but they wanted to give me that chance in fact they came back I pitched the whole thing to the board they had an executive session to talk about it with management out of the room they came

back and one of the board members who communicated what the board had the sentiment of the board during the executive session said speed is of the essence go for it and then I did something that in hindsight turned out to be more valuable than I ever expected I met with some key investors that I trusted that had followed our company and our businesses like mutual funds yeah yeah fund managers one of them was Will danoff from fidelity and the advice that will gave me and that others gave us as well was if you're going to do this go all in and to your point Chris about some of these other companies they don't have the ability to go all in because going all in is a serious step it's money it's

disruption the key to get to forego money right like you have to stop probably kill Revenue we told Wall Street we were going to depress our earnings by two billion dollars the first year yeah those really Hefty licensing fees that Netflix gave you actually backfires they went away they stopped right and not only that we spent more money on production to get ready for the new platform costs went up Revenue went down usually when you're running a company that's not what you try to do but the street said and it was so important that we did this do it be serious about it go all in and I thought wow okay so talking to them was important both to hear that but also to share your message with them so they understood how to think about your stock

price well yes I wanted to set it up with them in a way that would have them appreciate the opportunity that we had and the reason why we had to do it so it was the relationship with the customer leaving too much money on the table the disruptive nature of the new streaming platforms on the linear channels and linear television viewing all of those things so that when they heard it when we first announced we were doing this the stock shot up people were saying wow we're going to destroy our profits booms tacos that's amazing it was just amazing what the reaction was and this all led to an investor meeting because this now goes all the way back when we showed the

street what we had developed this is in April of 19 we launched Disney Plus in November of 19. up on the screen comes Pixar Marvel Star Wars now we've bought 21st Century Fox and The Simpsons National Geographic Avatar go on and on and everybody said wow okay this is a destination meaning literally an app that I'm gonna want because it's got all this high quality brand and entertainment in one place for a great price and now we've got the technology to do it now talk about a nail biting moment we launched in 2019 and our plan was for four to five million subscribers

in the first year we signed up 10 million in 24 hours and if you don't think I was nervous about the technology but once it did We're Off to the Races it was those 24 hours good that you bought that you bought bam Tech I think yeah instead of waiting five years to try to build it yourself and maybe not even have it work as well yeah I had the luxury of having many great days in the job and exhilarating days that 24 hours of launching Disney plus and getting to 10 million I mean was that one of the best Sky High well I'd love to hear so fast forward to today to streaming I think I'm not a deep Observer of it but it seems there's multiple kind of competitive platforms now I think most

people probably do see streaming as the future how do you think that will play out streaming wins who wins streaming over a linear cable yeah linear cable and satellite viewing is marching to the edge of a great precipice and I happen to believe that with generational shift meaning Baby Boomers being replaced and it goes over the cliff it goes over the edge not necessarily so in that world is forming and then mobile phones kind of social media is the sort of the two kind of dominant yeah the media absolutely so I think streaming wins not all streamers win it's not for the faint of heart costs a lot of money make great stuff and maintaining we should think of as

the premium high-end experience yeah and will we also see new models like ad-based models it's interesting because among the factions that are feeling anxious these days advertised as one of them but I'm actually convinced that viewers consumers will tolerate ad interruptions for lower prices partially I think has to do with inflation but it also has to do with the fact that consumers want more than one streaming platform and in order to afford more than one they'll take ads to cut the cost so all the services will have kind of multiple tiers like the way Hulu does yep I think that's a good thing I don't know what Apple ultimately does but yes Netflix is announced they're doing it it'd be interesting to see ultimately what Google does and

YouTube and whether they go into space I think right now the only thing that's really preventing them from acquiring content creators is regulation and fear of basically antitrust whether it's in Europe or in the United States so advertisers when linear TV goes away no one wants to watch Channels anymore except maybe news and sports power of live and big events will exist Sports move to streaming at some point like there's this tangle of existing deals right but at some point that works correct and I don't know how long that plays out Bob feel free to give us more of your predictions as many as you're comfortable making what else would you like me to predict movie theaters movie theater going will never return to its high water mark so it'll still be a thing but it'll be kind of this Niche activity hey I don't know if we call it

Niche but the reason for that is greater competition from basically movie quality television that can be watched in the home and everything about the home experience or the out of movie theater experience is pro consumer Mobility basically convenience convenience time customization personalization it all is moving in the direction of giving the consumer more Authority and they're going to use it what do you say to the credit like if you read the art critics who say that all of this is her the quality of films that you just have superhero movies and you don't have I don't know what the I'm just laughing at Martin Scorsese yeah well you still have the morning but do you have the Next Generation yeah Martin and Martin didn't nail us he and I

talked at one point I like him a lot well first of all I think we're ignoring the fact that the creativity right now that exists in what I'll call television yeah is phenomenal that means it's incredible so this is a this is a format change not a loss exactly a lot of the shows that I watch they're not multi-season they're one season yeah it's four or five episodes six episodes sometimes you'll watch episodes you don't even know whether it's coming back for another season but it's great storytelling and you can watch it all in one weekend all at once in one sitting and you can play it out over weeks so I think look if you really want me to predict the other they said advertisers are going to Prevail streamers will prevail consumers will prevail creators will prevail yes it's a great time for

creators they're anxious now because of disruption and how they get compensated and how they get measured what they created that who shall pass and it will be figured out and they will have access to more consumers more shelf space there's more shelf space for creators to create on I started a time there were three TV networks and movie theaters that was it now look at the world out there for creators it used to be by the way if you had made movies and you turned to TV you were like Pariah yeah you know you've come down a lot that's not the case anymore The Great Movie Makers are making plenty of Television I would argue about TV and how it's great

right now that's also because in TV the creative the showrunner is Prime and that's a very different model than a lot of what's been playing out in the past with like movie structures and I think it actually reinforces your point that it's about the Creator's Vision or even like the Pixar vision of like the director Vision first and when you're describing going to Pixar the big difference between assigning and having a person have an idea that they pitch is that person has a vision for what they want to do with it that's a very big difference than someone walking in turning around a situation there's a very similar parallel between that by the way on this very subject the other thing Pixar did that was quite interesting is that before the executive team came in to critique a film all other directors critique the film oh so

they go in a room with all the other directors and have a oftentimes viciously honest that's interesting you would get essentially critiqued by your peers people who had had a lot of success on their own and at times I'm told it was never in one of those recessions but it got kind of heated because they were unfiltered but you're getting it from another Creator not some executive or the big title that's funny because we had this debate internally because I created a channel that's editors only for precisely this reason because editors to other editors there's just a respect when you have skin in the game it changes the dynamic When anybody else is in that room because you have the respect Creator to

Creator and interestingly earlier you were talking about the m a strategy to Chris's question the point that I think really struck through for me is that creatives draw other creatives because one of the reasons you were able to go from Pixar to Marvel is that you could say well Pixar we've successfully acquired them and similarly earlier in your career when Spielberg and Lucas are engaging with you because you took a risk on Twin Peaks that's the message to me there is that creatives don't want only like a suit in charge and by the way creators love Executives that have the courage to take big risks you want to work for someone like that no it's great I agree and then Chris to your earlier point about the startups there's an

interesting connection here because when you said like as VCS you're kind of picking this person to invest in their Vision I agree what do you think is going to play out with the content strategies that all the streamers are working on and executing right now I mean you covered Tech you covered the creatives the rise of you know streaming is going to win advertising is going to be there no matter what all these Trends what do you think is working not working out there well I think it can't just be about volume it can't just be about filling your home screen with rows and rows and rows of product I think you still have to be choosy in other words you have to apply a little

bit more editorial judgment because that's a big difference I think between Disney plus and Netflix Netflix is you've got a zillion things yeah and there's some original content but it's all kind of mixed together where Disney plus is very kind of Premium right I don't really want to speak for Netflix and I certainly don't want to be critical of them but it wouldn't surprise me if they reduce volume yeah the other thing to look at because if there's sub bass isn't going to grow significantly and they can't price higher very easily because there's more competition and there's inflation than buying rights in perpetuity may be an issue and not everything has forever value and so it's going to be an interesting thing to watch licensing or buying these things for shorter term usage and it'll revert back to the Creator and the Creator will have an

opportunity to sell to others which will be a good thing for the creative community on the IP side you know you have so much experience on this and a lot of our Founders and creators are thinking about like new ways and creative ways of extending IP building IP do you have any thoughts or Lessons Learned when it comes to the IP game well I think if you create IP that is consumed and appreciated and understood valued by a consumer don't whip saw them don't change it too often maintain a consistency including when you innovate with that IP when you change it because I'm a big believer in respect versus reverence because the world changes then even IP has to evolve Mickey Mouse

doesn't look the same as he did in 1928 when he was created but do so in a measured and a user-friendly way suddenly everybody wakes up and Mickey Mouse no longer is a mouse but deserves is a rat or something like that that doesn't work one thing we haven't talked about is you know is gaming video games interactive content you know people talk a lot about maybe a buzzword but metaverse and people Define it differently maybe it's virtual reality maybe it's an interactive 3D World maybe it's just a deeper immersion you know our use of the internet which has already become you know pretty deep goes even deeper like when you think about sort of the future going out streaming was sort of the last decade like when you look in the Horizon what's

exciting what seems to be clear is technology whether it's AR or even VR but I'm thinking more AR is going to create more compelling experiences for consumers either I'll call it communal consumption and interaction while consuming or just more deeply immersive more dimensionalized experiences even visually than they've had before I like that I do think that I'll call it an immersive digital shared experience communal experience is interesting you know could you bring people together in a place in a digital place and have them all experience something with one another between one another you know we

saw it early on early stages of Sims and Club Penguin a little ahead of their time because the experiences that were being created were so rudimentary and you couldn't really do all that much and there was no Dimension and even the visual experience wasn't that great at a higher level it could be kind of interesting you know could we all convenient them in a Town Square in a digital Town Square and watch a movie I think you know I do VR Fairmount like I'm very interested in I think people get caught up looking at the resolution like if you compare it to a big screen TV it's weak in the ways the big screen TV is strong right it doesn't have the same quality content maybe you see the pixels but it's got a different feature which is if you do it right you actually

feel the sense that I feel right now when I'm in the same room with you the sense of presence it always tricks people with new tech that it's always better in a different dimension right if you looked at the first mobile phone as a desktop computer the lack of keyboard stood out to a lot of people right right but if you looked at it as wow a personalized phone you know magical computer screen in my pocket it was amazing right exactly so a lot of it's like the perspective if you look at VR as like a big screen TV it's going to look weak if you look at it as this magic box where I can be in the same room with you with Graphics that aren't quite there yet yes so also funny how quickly we forget some of the changes that felt so off to us inorganic I mean

we all have blackberries and Steve comes out with the iPhone what I got a touch point on the screen oh there's a famously the reporters are like well how are people going to type with their thumbs he's like they're going to learn they're going to learn how to use a touchscreen I was around when he was doing that and so much just happened that he didn't even see happening yeah yeah but he was against the App Store originally at the beginning someone said how do I create an app he said you create a website if you have a browser and that's it and there's no apps yeah I remember these cluttered ugly things in his perfect garden right we also he and I had a conversation about books I asked him I don't know whether it was the iPad I can't remember it wasn't the

iPhone you're gonna have a bookstore I'm gonna be able to read books no you know what do people want to do and I he got it quickly but yeah you got that you know given your experience in the physical world of character building Disney World Disneyland Etc do you think we would ever get to a point where we could have a Disney World in digital immersive experience entirely well I think it will be tried some virtual theme park experience it might become very compelling I don't think it replaces the physical experience that's very unique you do share it with others sometimes too many others it's just I just think that well I agree with Chris that VR is there's something about it that's very

compelling even though sometimes there's a loss of picture quality Etc there's something about that tangible immersive experience that's about as powerful as it gets yeah I think when Disney's imagineers build an immersive world that feels real that's such experience is very very hard to replicate not an app or a even with VR glasses it's like you're not gonna have people that just stop interacting with one other physical world because they can do so with glasses not going to happen I don't think it'll probably be something I would just guess native to the like it'll be a Roblox or a Minecraft something that's truly an interactive experience as opposed to generally when you take something like offline and try to make it online right or like you said earlier about trying to

turn the early history of film as starting as plays instead of what's native I think you could also I think you could argue also in fact I would probably argue that you end up with a lot of these mature Technologies with a barbell structure meaning you go more digital you also want to go more physical like it actually ends up people value the in-person time more and what you get rid of is all the middle stuff like the mediocre experiences this is typically what I happens in any maturing industry like it happened in retail they call it death in the middle right you have the scaled Amazon experience and you have the Gucci experience but who needs the middle who needs them all yeah right I think this might be happening with remote work now like we have in our team we have big off-sites we have dinners and then we

have zoom but who needs the the mediocre coffee in the office or whatever that's interesting I hadn't thought about it as it relates to work so just mention remote work do you have any thoughts just you know on what I tend to be conservative on remote work I happen to believe that it can't possibly equal the productivity of in-person work that's very conservative I understand and generational perhaps also creative maybe I worry a lot about creative bouncing creative ideas off of other people in the same space really important creative feedback if you can't give someone body language make them feel comfortable you're doing it on on a zoom oh boy I wouldn't want to be Creator yeah listening to someone bitching about the

movie I just made via Zoom doesn't work culture is another thing and I worry you want to create a company culture or business culture I happen to believe that there's value to that it's going to be harder to do with everybody working remotely and then leadership and mentoring I would not be where I am today had my bosses not been able to see me perform in some physical space yeah so I'm convinced of that that's great I was dying to hear your thoughts on that going back for one quick question you know obviously you know I work a lot and I focus on web 3 and crypto and there we think a lot about bringing communities together and new ways to Market and fund and co-create and other things well I'm excited about web 3.0 developments

although everything seems so nascent that I don't think anybody really knows what develops if I were a Creator I like the world that is ahead even though I think it's ill-defined right now and just don't think we know sometimes as you know it's a matter of some great creative mind using these tools in the most compelling way you know Pixar is a great example of that it's computer generated animation I mean originally the vision was from the make TV commercials out of it and so on so well why don't we make movies instead of hand-drawn animation and Pixar showed what could be done with that technology to enhance storytelling and thus the customer experience I don't think we've seen that yet in web 3.0 so I like the

prospects but I can't be specific I don't know I think of these Technologies as having distinct patterns where there's kind of a emerging phase and as you said there's usually like a kind of a breakout you know I call it native creative experience and so you have the Pixar you have probably in you know mobile it was something like Instagram you had asked before but it wasn't like an app that really talked that really kind of embraced the new medium yeah and that to me is what makes these new technology shifts exciting is that there's this interaction between the technology and the creative side so that point Chris is such a great point because to go back to what we talked about at the very beginning which is Pixar I go up to Pixar I spend a day there and I

observe very closely what is the dynamic between the creative side and the technology side and John Lasseter articulated this really well to me he put into words what I was seeing the creative side turns to the technology side and says give me the tools yes to do this for my story to tell the story this way I want to show snow in the most realistic fashion give me those tools they're constantly challenging the technology side to enable them to fulfill their Creative Vision at the same time the technology side creates technology not even knowing how it might be used by the experience side but they show it to the creators and Inspire them to create in a completely different level in a different direction yeah

ticks are so interesting because normally this happens in a broader marketplace right so you have YouTube come along that's dependent on broadband which of course is hundreds of companies and there's hundreds of video providers and the yin yang as you describe it happens across all these organizations I guess in Pixar it's unusual and I think maybe to do with Steve Jobs kind of visionary yeah they kept funding it kind of irrationally for I think like 10 years wasn't it before they finally had I think it was early 80s when he first bought it right as I recall I know that he bought it for 15 million he bought it at least as I recall a tech provider yeah it was a pure Tech thing for 15 million dollars you put 35 million of his own money in so there's 50 million and he sold the Disney for seven points

of the crazy the thing where he like ipo'd it like a week after Toy Story came out or something I don't remember what the date was we had to cover that up some crazy at one point anyway so I personally think that like we're entering I believe like an era now with things like virtual reality augmented reality web 3 where the technology is getting to the point where really creative people can come along and try to use those tools to create brand new experiences and as you say there always be these kind of Eternal truths and storytelling and other kinds of creative activities but like what is this new medium right like early film you know my understanding is they started off kind of filming plays and then they realized it has its own

language just like creative yeah vocabulary well you can go well beyond the confines of a stage in a theater and the stage is Limitless it's just completely and you can do close-ups and you know Zoom shots and all sorts of crazy stuff you couldn't do and what does that mean and it took decades for Creative people to really develop that right yes and I think in web 3.0 I think we're going to see some silly experiments but then something's going to come along I I Muse about it all the time to myself you know what could it be and that sort of I don't know whatever called yin yang that Dynamic it fascinates me and I think what you describe is going to play out where technology is put in the hands

we call it the Storyteller Walt Disney had a great quote in the 50s he had to write something about the future of media to put in a Cornerstone of a building or something and he wrote something like that no matter what happens I think he called it an electronic technology or telecommunications the purview of the Storyteller purview he uses is only to get broader or become more exciting yeah he's thinking of a world where technology is one of the storytellers greatest weapons tools yeah to create great stories and that to me is what excites me about next Generation technology well thank you Bob thank you for spending time with us this was super amazing I enjoyed it thank you all right and this ends this episode of web 3 with

A6 and Z outro music okay oh we have great music I may give you a note on that thank you for listening to web3 with A6 and Z you can find show notes with links to resources books or papers discussed transcripts and more at asicsncrypto.com this episode was produced and edited by sonal choxi that's me the episode was technically edited by our audio editor Justin golden with seven Morris credit also to moonshot design for the art and all thanks to support from Asics and Z crypto to follow more of our work and get updates resources from us and from others be sure to subscribe to our web 3

Weekly Newsletter you can find it on our website at asicsnzcrypto.com thank you for listening and for subscribing let's go do you want to say what your next book is on yeah I started out by wanting to write a book about leadership during crisis which I think is different than just general leadership because what's demanded of a leader is much greater I'm adding to that it essentially includes leadership during times of great disruption and transformation too which is relevant to a lot of things that we've talked about themes that I'm covering are basically what are the attributes of great leadership during times of great change or great crisis it's pretty clear to me the courage and empathy are right at the top of the list being able to be present for people

particularly during a crisis and you know I mentioned having courage really important but at the same time you have to be able to make decisions in a much more rapid rate than ever before do you have a title for this book yet no if you got any ideas got it you know I wanted to say crisis of a lifetime because the first book was right of a lifetime oh yeah too cute so I don't know thanks for being here Bob nice to be here Chris