> Like it doesn't really make sense to exist within Disney if you think about it too hard but it also is critical to what makes Disney... Disney.
Disney himself was a huge fan of technology and both him and the CEOs after him recognized that there's a part of the industry they're in (entertainment) that requires secrecy; literal "magic" is mostly "things you can do that other people don't know how to do." So they keep that research in-house because they want first-mover advantage on illusions, effects, and experiences that nobody else can do.
That's the best way to conceptualize Imagineering: it's a magic factory. In that sense, absolutely essential core-business-model stuff for the park-and-show entertainment sector of the company.
(Some of the more recent CEOs didn't grasp this aspect and actually did outsource some of the work done in the past half-decade. I'm going to be real interested to see what the park scene looks like in the Orlando area in the next decade or so as the technologies third-party vendors developed on Disney's behalf diffuse directly into Disney's competition).
Disney himself was a huge fan of technology and both him and the CEOs after him recognized that there's a part of the industry they're in (entertainment) that requires secrecy; literal "magic" is mostly "things you can do that other people don't know how to do." So they keep that research in-house because they want first-mover advantage on illusions, effects, and experiences that nobody else can do.
That's the best way to conceptualize Imagineering: it's a magic factory. In that sense, absolutely essential core-business-model stuff for the park-and-show entertainment sector of the company.
(Some of the more recent CEOs didn't grasp this aspect and actually did outsource some of the work done in the past half-decade. I'm going to be real interested to see what the park scene looks like in the Orlando area in the next decade or so as the technologies third-party vendors developed on Disney's behalf diffuse directly into Disney's competition).