The heuristic role in the death of Miramax (BW)

By Nancy Tartaglione

Roger Martin, dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto and Jennifer Riel, Associate Director of the Desautels Centre for Integrative Thinking at the Rotman School have penned a Viewpoint article for BusinessWeek that takes a look at why Miramax is dying.

The duo say that the decline of such a powerhouse can teach a lot about innovation and about the way in which companies inadvertently drive out that which they so desperately seek.

The story focuses in large part on the difference between the Weinstein-era Miramax and the Weinstein-less Miramax.

After the Weinsteins left, the films released saw ever-diminishing returns, say the duo. But the really interesting thing is:

"that the success of the Weinsteins' movies is neither mystical nor unexplainable. Nor is the failure of post-Weinstein Miramax. Miramax succeeded because Harvey developed a strategy for thinking about the movie industry while others fumbled. Miramax ultimately failed because Disney rejected Harvey's approach and didn't have anything with which to replace it."

The article goes on to talk about Miramax's "heuristic" for producing hit movies - a way of thinking about the mystery of what audiences want to see - that gave the studio a better shot at success than the blind guesses of its peers.

"It wasn't a perfect process, but it gave the Weinsteins the confidence to choose films, pick winners, and move ahead. The nature of innovation is that we can never prove a new idea in advance of its implementation. But we can try to shorten the odds. And that's what Miramax did."

"Why did Miramax fail when the Weinsteins left? Did the heuristics stop working? Maybe, but the evidence suggests that the new Miramax simply stopped using them." BusinessWeek has more here.