#64 – Disney: Create a Better World
“We are committed to creating a better world.”
— by The Walt Disney Company, the global entertainment leader founded in 1923 by Walt and Roy O. Disney in Los Angeles, California.
How one century of storytelling transformed imagination into one of the world’s most influential cultural infrastructures. Few companies have influenced the collective imagination as profoundly as Disney.
Over the past century, the company has evolved from a small animation studio into one of the world’s largest entertainment groups, encompassing film studios, television networks, streaming platforms, cruise lines, consumer products, and theme parks.
Today, Disney reaches billions of people through brands such as Disney, Pixar, Marvel, Lucasfilm, ABC, ESPN, National Geographic, and Disney+, generating more than $91 billion in annual revenue and employing approximately 225,000 people worldwide.
Its purpose deliberately reaches far beyond entertainment. That is both its strength and its greatest responsibility.
Stories do far more than entertain. They shape aspirations, influence behaviour, transmit values, construct identities, and define how generations imagine heroes, families, diversity, courage, friendship, and the future itself.
Very few organizations possess this level of cultural influence.
Over the past decade, Disney has increasingly linked its purpose to measurable commitments: reducing greenhouse gas emissions, investing in healthier production systems, expanding children’s access to hospitals and educational programs, strengthening inclusion across its workforce, and directing hundreds of millions of dollars toward community initiatives around the world.
Yet Disney’s real impact cannot be measured only through ESG reports or philanthropic investments.
Its most valuable asset is something far less tangible: attention.
Every day, millions of children and adults voluntarily enter stories created by Disney. Few companies in history have enjoyed such privileged access to people’s imagination.
This makes purpose extraordinarily consequential. Creating a better world is not primarily about producing better content.
It is about understanding that every story normalizes certain behaviours, elevates particular values, and quietly influences the culture people carry back into everyday life.
Purpose, therefore, becomes an editorial responsibility as much as a business strategy.
The question is no longer whether companies shape society.
Disney demonstrates that some companies inevitably do.
The only remaining question is how consciously they choose to exercise that influence.
