Inside Disney’s Toy Factory
Imagine a small girl holding a brand new toy for the first time. The colors and contours light up her eyes; her mental gears crank as she examines the product, figuring out its purpose. Then, she smiles as she happily joins the new, imaginary world from which the toy was originally born.
Chris Heatherly, 34, and Len Mazzocco, 53, design toys that inspire such scenes on a daily basis for hundreds of thousands of children around the world. Together, the two help run Walt Disney’s toy division, under the Disney Consumer Products banner.
The group, which includes other departments such as apparel and publishing, has doubled its revenue to $30 billion over the last five years—in large part due to the double digit growth in toy revenue that Heatherly and Mazzocco have drummed up each of the three years they’ve been a team.
The pair attribute their success to a process they’ve refined since joining forces: a systematic brainstorming and prototyping process that supports the continuous innovation necessary to overhaul toy lineups every six months.
It matches Mazzocco’s years of toy designing experience—a specialty that requires knowledge of child psychology and play patterns—with Heatherly’s experience in designing software, electronics, and other core technologies. “Len’s group is almost like an Ideo that we’ve set up specifically for Disney,” says Heatherly, referring to the Palo Alto design and innovation consultancy.
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Photo by BusinessWeek.
Jaclyn Wells on July 26th, 2009 1:14 pm
That has got to be the coolest job that they have! I would love to work for disney designing toy’s, i don’t think you would ever have a bad day doing that job, knowing your bringing so many smiles to childrens faces, not to mention you’d get to play with toy’s all day…what could be better then that?
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