Disney Introduction The Walt Disney Company is a multinational diversified global entertainment business worth $1 86.53 billion (as of the 1" of May 2023) (Disney Market Cap 2010-2022: DIS), with five operational branches (Delaney & Stawicki, 2016). The business operates out of five distinct segments: Media Networks, Parks and Resorts, Studio Entertainment, Consumer Products, and Interactive' (Delaney & Stawicki, 2016). Throughout the years, there has been extensive development of digital technologies that has transformed the way companies and platform ecosystems manage, share their knowledge between employees, and leverage it for a competitive advantage. Effective knowledge management and digital strategy have become a crucial element for successful organizational performance. In order for companies to succeed, it is essential that they align their knowledge and strategic objectives such that they can improve their performance and exert a competitive edge. This report will examine, discuss, and analyse, the key links between knowledge management, digital strategy, and organizational performance within Disney. The report will also examine if Disney has any businesses that could be regarded as a platform ecosystem and what effects that may play in their overall business model, while also looking at if any services that Disney offers could benefit by being transformed by the platform ecosystem model. The report will also aim to provide a comprehensive array of potential areas for improvement within Disney's operations. Disney Overview The Walt Disney company is composed of five different business segments, the biggest business segment of Disney as of 2022 is the Media and Entertainment segment earning $55 billion in revenue (Stoll. The Walt Disney Company - revenue by operating segment 2022 2022) -which includes the Disney Channels, ESPN, and the ABC Family (Delancy & Stawicki, (016). Disney was originally founded by Wait and Roy Disney on the 16" of October 1923 (Walt Disney Company is founded, 2020). The company's mission has not changed much throughout the years " To entertain, inform and inspire people around the globe through the power of unparalleled storytelling, reflecting the iconic brands, creative minds and innovative technologies that make ours the world's premier entertainment company" meanwhile their vision is slowly becoming a reality "to be one of the world's leading producers and providers of entertainment and information" (Samuel, Disney Mission, Vision Statement & Values Analysis, 2021). Disney uses vertical integration strategies to gain a competitive advantage, since the 1980s, the Walt Disney company has used vertical integration in production, marketing, and supply chain of products and media services (The Walt Disney Company Case Study, 2019). As a business, Disney operates as a linear business, instead of facilitating a platform ecosystem environment where they would have enabled value-creating interactions between producers and consumers of their digital services or products in an open environment, the environment is fully closed; and controlled by Disney (Parker et al., 2016). Figure 2 shows a linear vs platform ecosystem chart that shows where each of Disney's business segments go. The most fitting service that Disney operates that could potentially be a platform ecosystem would be the Disney+ service as it could allow for sellers to upload and monetize their content. Disney's role in the interaction would need to be as a content moderator and quality assurance monitor (Cohen et al., 2023); this would benefit Disney as it could introduce a network effect and value creation cycle where vendors create content for customers that attracts more vendors and customers to the service (Parker et al., 2016). Figure 1 shows the potential relationship that the Disney + service could have if it were a platform ecosystem business model. Disney incentivizes customers using bundles, packaging different services to meet the individual needs of the customers and offering them at varying prices (Cohen et al., 2023). The linear business model that Disney follows, ultimately allows Disney to have full creative control, and quality assurance over the products and services that are being sold, giving more fine-grained control and higher quality products. See Disney Platform Ecosystem Model Research in the appendix for more information about Disney's research into platform ecosystem models. Digital Strategy Disney, has embraced the digital technologies of the present in order to improve its operations, enhance the customer experience throughout its business segments, and support its knowledge management initiatives. This section will explore the digital strategies that Disney employs to gain value in the eyes of stakeholders and support its knowledge management initiative. Disney has managed to leverage social media networks to create advertisement campaigns, the most prominent advertisement campaign is the Dream Big Disney Princess campaign that challenged photographers to take inspiring photos of female role models. The goal was to draw attention to real-life examples of inspirational women that contain the "strong and feisty" characteristics of Disney princesses. Disney also announced that for every photo tagged using the "#DreamBigPrincess", they would donate $1 to a charity of their choice (Tas. 2020). Figure 3 shows Disney's social media strategy for the #DreamBigPrincess campaign. Disney has leveraged digitization of their value cycle in order to provide a more accessible and convenient viewing experience for their customers, more specifically. Disney uses digital technology to increase engagement and customer interaction, instead of in a conventionally traditional transactional manner. During late 2019, Disney+ was launched and has published Disney's products and services in digital format on the new streaming service (Mixson, 2022), Since the launch, the user base has amassed over 11% million monthly subscribers (Solsman, 2021) and is expected to reach up to 260 million by 2024 (Mixson, 2022). Disney + has introduced a new revenue stream and has expanded its customer base. Figure 4 is a diagram of the McKinsey 7-S Framework analysing whether Disney+ aligns with Disney's mission statement (Waterman et al., Structure is not organization 1980). After analysing the company, it is determined that the transition to digital, and the digitalization of the company, has positively impacted Disney's ability to reach consumers and attract a positive customer experience. Disney has implemented various digitalization techniques in Disney parks in order to increase customer satisfaction, specifically around queuing. The first of these technologies is the implementation of virtual queue-waiting, the new reservation system allows customers to reserve a place in an attraction by waiting inside a virtual queue, this allows customers to be physically free to attend other activities while waiting in queue. When the customer's virtual-queuing has concluded, they can physically arrive at the attraction and participate. The implementation of virtual queues, called Fast Pass, has increased customer good-will and also increased revenues as every minute spent in line is a minute spent not generating revenue (Cope et al.. 2011). Furthermore, Disney parks have been further enhanced and digitized using magic band technology. Customers can use the virtual wristbands as access control mechanisms to enter their rooms, purchase items, such as tickets, and have the fast pass technology integrated into the ecosystem. The magic bands also enable Disney to conduct mass data collection across its parks, as every interaction with the magic and technology allows Disney to know where each customer is, where they have been, and give valuable information to the Disney Park cast about each customer's desires (Mary, Bernard. (2017)). This digitized analytics data collection feeds the knowledge that Disney has of its customers, hence, enhancing Disney's knowledge management and collection capabilities. Knowledge Management Without effective knowledge management, it becomes increasingly difficult for a company to scale successfully. Good knowledge management ensures that a company remains effective in applying its business without leaking knowledge as old employees leave and new employees arrive. This section will discuss Disney's knowledge management strategy in its parks, which is a cornerstone of the company's success in an ever-evolving digital landscape. More specifically, the intricate connections between knowledge management, digital strategy, and organizational performance will be explored further, revealing how these elements work in unison to allow Disney to be as effective as possible. Disney highly values human capital, and considers it as possibly the most valuable commodity. As such, Disney utilizes the human workforce staffing the parks to the fullest extent, all cast and staff in Disney's parks can be of use and are equipped with the knowledge necessary to help any bewildered customer seeking assistance, Hence, Disney's focus on cast and staff training is overall more tacit in knowledge, hence more personalized than codified. Disney considers customer dissatisfaction as an overall loss and so emphasizes the importance of keeping customers satisfied (Cope et al., 2011). Furthermore, Fast Passes have been optimized through knowledge management strategies by observing the customer satisfaction inside waiting lines by managers and analysts. In order for Fast Pass to be optimized, it required balancing the cost of capacity for each attraction at the park with the amount of lines that each attraction would handle. In order to find the optimal conditions of each attraction in order to optimize waiting times, a more codified and standardized approach was required (Cope et al., 2011). Lastly, Disney offers a variety of courses to cast members that cover the different aspects of the company, including interactions with park guests, leadership, and management. The goal of the curriculum is to instil the vision, mission, and values of the company into the staff with the goal of enhancing the customer service experience (Disney Institute). Table 5 below explores the different knowledge management approaches, comparing the knowledge captured through personalization and codification. In addition, see Figure 7 in the appendix that shows Disney's SECI model. Overall, it can be observed that Disney places important attention in knowledge management, the comparisons between the elements of Disney that are more personalized in nature, rather than codified, show that the company places more importance on the tacit knowledge. Hence, Disney focuses more on personalization overall. The drive for excellent customer experience through tacit employee training results in increased customer satisfaction and good-will. Conclusion In conclusion, this report analysed the links between knowledge management, digital strategy, and organizational performance within Disney, along with determining if Disney has any platform ecosystem businesses in one of its many business segments. It is essential for businesses to have a strong and effective digital strategy, and to be able to efficiently utilize its knowledge management policies in order to achieve higher organizational performance, as it is increasingly difficult for companies to do so as they scale in size and begin facing adversities of increasing magnitude. Firstly, this report determined that none of Disney's business segments operate in the platform ecosystem model where sellers are allowed to freely trade with customers in an open environment. mediated by Disney. Throughout this report, Disney has exhibited an effective digital strategy along with robust knowledge management initiatives for enhancing organizational performance. The evidence of strong knowledge management initiatives explored for these business decisions include, encouraging a personalized tacit training strategy for staff in parks, and, multiple codified courses aiming to increase the knowledge and abilities of the staff working at the parks. The codified data collection of customer interactions throughout the park was also explored, which shows that codification is necessary to ensure that the quality of the data remains consistent. The above points to Disney being a knowledge-intensive organisation that has fully utilized digital strategies and knowledge management to gain a competitive advantage, which can be observed byits success. This report will hopefully provide a base for further future research into the way Disney manages to integrate its digital strategy with knowledge management techniques to achieve an efficient and satisfying work force, resulting in increased organizational performance. Recommendations Disney should consider implementing a platform ecosystem model business in order to increase its global influence and profits. As previously mentioned, the platform ecosystem model allows suppliers of goods and services to directly interact with the consumer, allowing Disney in the position to mediate such interactions, setting the rules and regulations of the platform. Disney could use its iconic brand and wide library of content and resources to build a thriving ecosystem and attract a sizable user base. In the age of platform ecosystems, this should be a priority as it could increase customer loyalty and introduce new income streams.
