Bob Iger ran Disney from 2005 to 2020, acquiring Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Fox's entertainment assets along the way.
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Iger ran Disney for fifteen years, acquiring Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Fox along the way. The book recounts how each of those deals was closed — including the conversation with Steve Jobs that unlocked Pixar — and what criteria he applied to value assets whose price depended almost entirely on intellectual property and the talent behind it. For anyone analysing companies, the most useful part is not the leadership principles of the subtitle but the description of an acquisition strategy executed consistently for over a decade.
Bob Iger ran Disney from 2005 to 2020, acquiring Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm and Fox's entertainment assets along the way. That fact — four transformative acquisitions executed by one CEO — is what justifies reading this book, and it is also what Iger recounts best. His description of negotiating the 2006 Pixar purchase with Steve Jobs is the finest chapter: Iger explains that the problem was not price but the distrust accumulated during Michael Eisner's tenure, and that the deal unlocked once he accepted Pixar keeping its culture and creative leadership. The pattern repeats with Marvel and Lucasfilm: Disney was buying intellectual property and creative capacity, not factories, and the risk was destroying through integration the very thing it had paid for. The book has the usual defect of executive memoirs: the leadership principles of the subtitle — optimism, courage, decisiveness — are vague statements that explain nothing. The value lies in the transactional material, not the motivational trappings. And an honest reckoning with cost is missing: the price paid for Fox, and the resulting debt, are barely examined.
For readers wanting to see an acquisition strategy sustained over fifteen years; less suited if you want financial analysis of the deals.
FactThe Spanish edition is published by Conecta (Penguin Random House); Iger was Disney's CEO from 2005 to 2020 and returned to the role in 2022.
