Department of MIS, Dhaka University | WALT DISNEY DECIDES TO NAME HIS CARTOON CHARACTER MICKEY | Term Paper on a topic from 75 greatest decision ever made |

Acknowledgement

I would like to express my deep gratitude to Mr. Ashis Talukder, Assistant Professor, Department of MIS, Dhaka University for his patient guidance, teaching Decision Support System in fall, 2013 session. I would like to mention that under his supervision, I have gone through a number of interesting topics that made me curious to study on 75 greatest decision ever made. I have chosen a topic for this term paper where I have put some extra effort to know in details. I would also like to extend my thanks to the Mr. Ashis Talukder for helping us to explore greatest and worst business decision ever made
Finally, I wish to thank my parents for their support and encouragement throughout my study.

Table of Contents

Introduction 4 The 75 Greatest Management Decision Ever Made 5 A Great Decision for Term Paper 8 Background of the Decision 8 How This Decision Benefited 9 The Greatest Lessons 10 Conclusion 10

Introduction

“The essence of ultimate decision remains impenetrable to the observer—often indeed, to the decider himself. . . . There will always be the dark and tangled stretches in the decision-making process—mysterious even to those who may be most intimately involved,” said John F Kennedy.
An air of mystery lies at the heart of decisions and decision making. An entire academic discipline, decision science, is devoted to understanding management decision making. Much of the theory is built on the foundations set down by early business thinkers, who believed that under a given set of circumstances human behavior was logical and therefore predictable. The fundamental belief of the likes of computer pioneer Charles Babbage and Scientific Management founder Frederick Taylor was that the decision process (and many other things) could be rationalized and systematized. Based on this premise, models were developed to explain the workings of commerce, and the same models were applied to the way in which decisions are made.
This celebration of the 75 greatest management decisions is drawn from throughout the ages and throughout the world. Executives, consultants, academics, commentators, and opinionated people from the business world and elsewhere were canvassed for their ideas and insights. It is expected that opinions and suggestions on which decisions to include varied greatly.

The 75 Greatest Management Decision Ever Made

1 A slave owner decides to place an advertisement for the return of a lost slave.
2 Apple decides to develop the first salable PC.
3 Henry Ford decided to start his own company.
4 Sears, Roebuck decides to go into retail sales.
5 Julius Reuter decides to use carrier pigeons to deliver information.
6 Swiss watch manufacturers decide to collaborate.
7 Bill Gates decides to license MS-DOS to IBM.
8 Reuben Mattus decides to market ice cream to supermarkets.
9 Thomas Watson decides to change his company's name to IBM.
10 Walt Disney decides to name his cartoon character Mickey.
11 Marvin Bower decides to keep the McKinsey name for his company.
12 Richard Sears decides to sell products through a catalog.
13. Coca-Cola decides to hold a competition for the design of its new bottle.
14 Konosuke Matsushita decides to institute product demonstrations.
15 Mattel decides to add the Ken doll to its line of Barbie toys.
16 Alfred P. Sloan of GM decides to segment the market for their car models.
17 The Grateful Dead decide to let fans tape their concerts.
18 Phillip Morris decides to reposition Marlboro as a man's cigarette.
19 Henry Heinz decides his company needs a slogan.
20 William Hoover decides to distribute his sweepers through a retail network.
21 Harley-Davidson executives decide to establish the Harley Owners Group.
22 Coca-Cola decides to sell to members of the armed forces for a nickel a bottle.
23 Henry Luce decides to rank companies as the Fortune 500.
24 Akito Morita decides to develop the Walkman.
25 Hartford doctors decide to install telephones in their offices.
26 Honda decides to market small motorbikes in the United States.
27 Aaron Feuerstein decides to keep Malden Mills open after a major fire in its factory.
28 Levi-Strauss decides to extend credit to wholesalers after an earthquake and fire, and later decides to keep employees working during the Great Depression.
29 Baron de Coubertin decides to convene a conference to establish the Olympic Games.
30 American Express decides to continue cashing traveler’s checks during the Great Depression.
31 Warren Buffett decides to invest in Berkshire Hathaway.32 Coca-Cola decides to return to its original recipe.
33 Johnson & Johnson decides to pull Tylenol from store shelves.
34 Percy Barnevick decides to merge Asea and Brown Boveri.
35 The Incas decide to build a network of roads and administrative centers.
36 The ITT board decides to appoint Harold Geneen its CEO.
37 Pierre Du Pont of GM decides to adopt Alfred P. Sloan’s reorganization plan for GM.
38 St. Bernard decides to reorganize the Cistercian monasteries.
39 Michael Dell decides to sell PCs directly to consumers and built to order.
40 Procter & Gamble decides to introduce brand management.
41 Jeff Bezos decides to sell books over the Internet.
42 Henry Durant decides to go see Napoleon III.
43 Paul Garrett of GM decides to invite Peter Drucker to study the company.
44 Elvis Presley decides to join the army.
45 John Larson decides to ask Tom Peters to make a presentation to a client.
46 Napoleon decides to promote people based on merit.
47 Jack Welch of GE decides to institute Work-Out.
48 Thomas Watson Jr. decides to commit IBM to developing a new line of computers.
49 Wal-Mart decides to move into the grocery business.
50 Edward L. Bernays decides to stage a march to promote smoking for women.
51 Harvard business school devides to launch the Harvard Business Review and to establish the HBS Fund.52 Lou Gerstner decides not to split IBM.
53 Rupert Murdoch decides to build a printing plant that doesn’t require union labor.
54 Luciano Benneton decides to invest in an advanced clothing factory.
55 Toyota decides to implement W. Edwards Deming’s quality techniques.
56 Herb Kelleher of Southwest Airlines decides to cut the extras.
57 Leaders of Miletus in Ancient Greece decide to specialize in one industry.
58 Belgian business leaders decide to apply the principles of action learning.
59 Cities in Northern Germany decide to form an association to promote their commercial interests.
60 Edwin Land decides to take a walk and comes up with the idea for the Polaroid camera.
61 Ray Kroc decides to buy the rights to McDonald’s restaurants and franchise them.
62 The ancient Chinese decide to institute a system of currency.
63 William Wrigley decides to offer free packs of chewing gum with his cans of baking powder.
64 Kemmons Wilson decides to build his own motel.
65 Gillette decides to position itself at the high-quality, premium-price end of the market.
66 Arthur Fry of 3M decides what Post-Its can be used for.
67 Henry Ford decides to pay his workers $5 a day.
68 3M decides to allow its researchers to spend 15 percent of their time working ontheir own projects.
69 Hewlett-Packard decides to hire some of the excess technical talent after World War II.
70 Emperor Hadrian decides to provide all miners in the Roman Empire with bathhouses.
71 GE decides to establish a center for executive development.
72 Ricardo Semler of Semco decides to fire 60 percent of his company’s top management.
73 Jan Carlzon of SAS decides to send 35,000 managers to customer service training centers.
74 Reg Jones of GE decides to implement a management succession process.
75 President McKinley decides to allow Elihu Root to restructure the U.S. armed services.

A Great Decision for Term Paper

10 Walt Disney decides to name his cartoon character Mickey.

Background of the Decision

Chicago-born Walter E. Disney (1901–1966) grew up on a farm in Missouri before returning to Chicago to study art. In 1920, Disney moved to Kansas City, where he worked for the animator Ub Iwerks. Along the way, Disney also went bankrupt, with debts of $15,000 following the failure of his Laugh 0 Gram Company of Kansas City. In 1923 he left Kansas City for Los Angeles in search of a job in the movie business. He wasn’t the first and he certainly wasn’t the last. Initially, Disney was singularly unsuccessful. No job materialized. Disney thought he might have missed the boat entirely.

Disney could have returned to Kansas. He didn’t. Instead, he rented a camera, assembled an animation stand, and set up a studio in his uncle’s garage. In 1923, the21-year-old Walt Disney was in business with his older brother Roy. In 1923, Disney, the corporation, was born.

Disney got off to a decidedly poor start. Its first film, Alice, barely kept the company going. The second, Oswald the Rabbit, was released in 1927. Walt’s business acumen temporarily deserted him and he lost control of the film rights. Then his luck changed: The mouse materialized and he listened to his wife.

Walt Disney listened to his wife, Lillian, and decided to call his cartoon mouse Mickey rather than Mortimer. Entertainment was never the same after Mickey and Minnie debuted in Steamboat Willie in 1928.

The facts are that the mouse in question began life as Mortimer Mouse. Walt Disney’s wife, Lilly, did not take to the name and suggested Mickey as a replacement. Walt listened. Whether this was to placate his wife or out of some deep realization that Mickey was the ideal name to launch a business empire will never be known. (Of course, why Mickey works and Mortimer doesn’t is a matter of serious debate.“Maybe Mickey Mouse didn’t sound quite as onomatopoeic as Mortimer Mouse, but was a friendlier, more informal name, suggesting an affinity with the common man,” observed one book with due solemnity

How This Decision Benefited

On Sunday, November 18, 1928, Mickey Mouse was featured in one of the only cinematic epics of seven minutes in length: Steamboat Willie. This was the first cartoon that synchronized sound and action. Steamboat Willie reversed the tide of Walt Disney’s fortunes. “A peach of a synchronization job all the way, bright, snappy, and fitting the situation perfectly,” said Variety. “Kept the audience laughing and chuckling,” said Weekly Film Review.

After Mickey’s invention, Disney never looked back. Flowers & Trees (1932) brought the world Technicolor. By 1937, Disney was producing the feature-length Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs. More followed, including Pinocchio (1940), Fantasia(1940), Dumbo (1941), and Bambi (1942). After the Second World War, Disney introduced his cartoon characters to real actors in classics including Treasure Island(1950), Davy Crockett (1955), and Mary Poppins (1964). The effect was continued huge success for Disney. This bred even greater ambitions. In 1955, Disney opened Disneyland in Anaheim, California. Disney World in Orlando, Florida opened in1971. Then the Magic Kingdom became mired in corporate reality until it turned the corner with the 1987 blockbusters—Three Men and a Baby; Good Morning, Vietnam; Beauty and the Beast; and The Lion King. Eurodisney and Disney’s Michael Eisner are successes in keeping with Walt’s blueprint.
The Greatest Lessons

Listen and you shall find. Not even an epochal character like Walt Disney had all the answers. Listening is one of the great unrecognized skills of business leadership. Persist, and then persist some more. “He was at least halfway convinced that he was too late, by perhaps six years, to break into animation, but [it] was the only area in which he had any prior experience,” noted one of Disney’s later biographers.5 The Disney Corporation didn’t happen overnight, and was probably all the better for that. Walt Disney persisted. He believed and he recruited fellow believers.

Conclusion

A great decision can bring a drastic change in business. Likewise this decision, every decision is considered as a great decision in history. Behind every successful company/person there must be a great decision in lifetime.