What Elements in the External Environment Might Affect Pixar’s Strategy?

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1. What elements in the external environment might affect Pixar’s strategy?

• Demographic element. People who are getting older every day.
• Technological element. The continuous advancement of technology.
• Economic element. (Unemployment - some people may not be able to afford ticket prices.

1. What key internal resources does Pixar have that might help it support its competitive strategy? Identify Pixar's tangible and intangible resources.

Tangible Resources:

• Financial – Steve jobs helped fund the company to a huge degree at one point even investing 25% of his wealth at the time. Due to such a strong initial investment and the company’s record of deliver hit movie after hit movie, both critically and commercially, the company is prepared for the future and has room to grow.
• Physical – Pixar has adequate physical facilities and is doing well enough financially that it can grow the amount of physical space it has if it so desires. Additionally, now that they are owned by Disney, they have access to whatever Disney facilities or resources they may require.
• Technological – The company started off with George Lucas who wanted to pursue computer animation in storytelling and is well known himself for pushing the envelope visually. Due to Pixar’s then struggle at turning a profit, it was sold to Jobs how funded the company to get the resources it needed. As the company has grown both pre and post Disney, they have developed much of the new software and hardware they have needed, and it appears they will continue to do so.

Intangible Resources:

• Organizational –  Pixar structures itself like a committee when it makes decisions for how to run and develop the stories it attempts to tell. This approach gets many different eyes on whatever problems may occur and allows for a wide variety of options with the idea of this leading to the best final outcome of the films.
• Human – Based upon this case study Pixar does incredibly well in managing its people. It gives a large level of freedom to its team to create their stories, invests in continued education for their employees to better themselves and shows a level of dedication to their wellbeing by limiting overtime and have physicians come in regularly.   This has led to John Lasseter even being called the “Walt Disney of the 21st century.”
• Innovation – Leadership by Ed Catmull has time and again lead to the technological development that pixar is known for and has allowed them to innovate beyond many of their competitors in visual animation and storytelling.
• Reputation – Due to Pixars repeated successes the company has built a brand around quality family entertainment. After the acquisition by Disney, the company even more so now has a reputation that is as one of the best in the businesPixar studios adds value through many segments of their process with results that are clear to see. Moving through the model in order gives us a slow start however as there is almost no mention of inbound logistics within the case study. Being that Pixar is in the business of making films and not in delivering tangible goods the best process where we see inbound logistics at play is in where how the recruit their talent. By recruiting talented creators from the Ney York Institute of Technology who worked with Catmull. Then, by Pixar creating their own university to further enhance the skills of its animators, they are making sure that their inbound talent to work on new productions is always well educated and experienced to create a quality product that they hope surpasses the competition. The repeated financial and critical success shows that this method of talent acquisition has led to value created for the customer who sees a better final product.

        Operationally, there is much more to garner from this case study as the development process in Pixar is examined. The company shows a consistent and incredible attention to detail through not just story creation, but the quality of art work they put forth. This detail is evidenced by the long development process for each film, the willingness to rewrite many stories and scenes as much as 30 different times until they are satisfied with it and entire new divisions to oversee quality assurance from a story perspective. Additionally, Pixar continues to challenge themselves to innovate in technology and push the limit on what is possible when using computer animation. This creates more life like scenes within the movie that allows previously unobtainable levels of emoting to be seen in computer animation and has allowed for the success of stories such as one that can go 39 minutes without dialogue and still do well.

        With outbound logistics there is very little to tell based on the case study, but marketing is much more present. Pixar continues to add value to the customer through building up its brand. It has created an image within the customers mind that they create quality work and should be excited to see their movies. The merging with Disney attracted a large number of potential customers who loved Disney movies and inspired many of Pixar’s own creators. By using Disney to handle its marketing, the customer gets the value of reliability from a well-established figure. By choosing to let Disney handle the marketing of the company, and sticking to Disney tone of choice, being family films, the company has allowed itself more freedom to work creatively and have every member of their team focused on creative and storytelling talent.

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