After all, Eisner is the media savant who soared up the ranks at ABC to become a VP before the age of 30. A mere five years later, he was running Paramount Pictures and green-lighting box office hits such as Saturday Night Fever, Raiders of the Lost Ark and Terms of Endearment. He followed that with a 21-year tenure as chairman and chief executive of the Walt Disney Corp., which he transformed from a $1.8 billion animation and amusement park company into an $80 billion global conglomerate. He’s written best sellers, hosted his own show on CNBC, been deemed one of the most powerful men in the world, and along the way, maintained a successful marriage that’s survived in Hollywood for more than four decades. He didn’t even let a little thing like heart-bypass surgery get in the way of his wheeling and dealing (just minutes before he went under the knife, Eisner told his surgeon he could have his tickets to the World Cup finals as long as he lived through the procedure to watch the event on television).
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30 Second MBA: Which ideas do you kill and which ones do you keep?
