HBS · April 2024 · Team research

Understanding Marvel’s Turnaround

A team analysis of how an entertainment business recovered and changed the way it used its characters and creative assets.

Co-authored with Brooke-Logann Williams and Kshitij Maheshwari for Turnaround & Transformation, Harvard Business School, April 2024.

The question

How did Marvel move from a period of financial distress towards a different position in entertainment? Our team used the company’s history to examine the decisions behind a turnaround.

What we examined

The paper considered the causes of the earlier decline and the changes in strategy and organisation that followed. It examined how creative assets, management decisions and the structure of the business shaped the options available.

Why it interests me

A library of well-known characters does not decide its own future. The work of deciding how to finance, develop and distribute those assets is a large part of the business of entertainment.

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