Strategic Planning | Managerial Effectiveness | Author | Toronto – Curiosity Is Power: Putting Strategic Business Ideas To Work

Value-based strategic and organizational thinking for a better world.

Leading Disney Historian Didier Ghez Provides Rave Review of The Business of Walt Disney!

Barry Linetsky’s…excellent book…is the first real attempt at telling the whole story of Walt’s career purely from a business standpoint and it definitely achieves its goal.

Barry has done his homework. His book is well researched and an easy read. He makes excellent use of all the interviews that have been released via Walt’s People over the years and of all the other books about Disney that were not available to his predecessors.

This is…an excellent book…that Disney enthusiasts will want to read right away.

The Business of Walt Disney and the Principles of His Success

EXCITING NEWS—An updated version of TBWD is now available from amazon with a new cover and new publisher, Windy Tangerine Press.

This is the same great book that was originally published by Theme Park Press, with minor corrections and a new cover. It remains the first and most complete Walt Disney biography that takes you deep inside the business life and career adventures of Walt Disney. It shines light on 9 principles that Walt used to guide his success throughout his life and career, and you can apply them just as easily.

Written for entrepreneurs, business leaders, managers, students, and every Disney lover, The Business of Walt Disney and the Nine Principles of His Success by Barry Linetsky tells the exciting true story of Walt Disney’s rise from graphic artist in Kansas City, Missouri, to become the most recognized, loved, and celebrated businessman of all time!

This is the business adventure that you don’t want to miss!

Available now in paperback, and coming soon in hardcover and eBook formats from amazon.

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“The inclination of my life—the motto, you might call it—has been to do things and make things which will give pleasure to people in new and amusing ways. By doing that I please and satisfy myself.”

Walt Disney

“To satisfy the customer is the mission and purpose of every business…[and] any serious attempt to state ‘what our business is’ must start with the customer, his realities, his situation, his behavior, his expectations, and his values.”

Peter Drucker

“It’s no secret. We’ve always tried to manage by our values because when you know what your values are, decision-making is easier.”

Roy O. Disney

“Management consists of making decision after decisions, all day long, and if your values are destructive…your decisions tend to be bad, fuzzy…. Management is all a matter of values in the final analysis.”

Roy O. Disney

“The primary purpose guiding all great organizations is to enrich the lives of customers.”

John Donahoe, CEO, Nike

“The market process is primarily about figuring out how to create new value for consumers…. The status quo is merely the most recent expression of the process—it’s yesterday’s winners before they are replaced by tomorrow’s.”

Per Bylund

“It is the customer who determines what a business is, what it produces, and whether it will prosper.”

Peter Drucker

“Every step toward the elimination of profit is progress on the way toward social disintegration.”

Ludwig von Mises

BOOKS

Learn about my books, including The Business of Walt Disney and the Nine Principles of his Success.

BLOG

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ARTICLES

Read my management and opinion articles, both new and old, published and unpublished.

SERVICES

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Experience
20+ years executive-level strategic contribution
Education
MBA, MA Philosophy, Hon. BA Sociology
Thought Leadership
Published author of books and journal articles
Hobbies
Hockey, nature photography, music

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Recent Blog Posts

Using Customer-Centric Value Propositions to Avoid Organizational Pathology

How To Use Customer-Centric Value Propositions to Avoid Organizational Pathology

April 22, 2025

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Customers seek their own solutions by choosing to acquire services within their own contexts-of-use. You can avoid organizational pathology by structuring your business around value propositions that are meaningful and inspiring to your target market to win customer loyalty.

How Walt Disney Rethought Conventional Rules to Reward Positive Emotions

January 23, 2025

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Walt Disney rethought conventional theme park rules based on his own values and belief that people are good, fair, and honest, and like him, seek life-affirming experiences and will generously reward those who can fulfill their emotional desires.

An Inquiry into Principles of Requisite Agility in Situations of Complexity

September 8, 2024

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Here are a set of principles to help guide the thinking and practice of Requisite Agility. Requisite Agility is an emerging practice of how to develop work system capabilities of an organization within its ecosystem to acquire the ability to adapts its value propositions and respond in real-time to changes in (multi-sided) demand as they emerge dynamically within each customer’s contextualized situational need in a way that is profitably sustainable by the organization.

Walt Disney Succeeded by Focusing on What Others Thought to be Unnecessary

August 19, 2024

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The recognized experts often criticized Walt for his attention to what they considered to be unnecessary and wasteful details, but time and again, customers proved Walt right and his critics wrong. That there is a general lack of interest in making available “what isn’t necessary” was a key discovery for Walt.

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