Disney World forms part of the Parks and Resorts division of The Walt Disney Company, one of the largest companies in the world. However, many competencies for SMEs and large companies are similar.
2.Analyse the competencies required for SMEs that Disney should also consider in trying to remain entrepreneurial when it comes to technology.
Extracted text: Disney's $1 Billion Bet on a Magical Wristband IF YOU WANT to imagine how the world will look in just a few years, once our cell phones become the keepers of both our money and identity, skip Silicon Valley and book a ticket to Orlando. Go to Disney World. Then, reserve a meal at a restaurant called Be Our Guest, using the Disney World app to order your food in advance. © The Independent Institute of Education (Pty) Ltd 2020 Page 3 of 8 16; 17; 18; 19; 20 2021 If you're wearing your Disney MagicBands and you've made a reservation, a host will greet you at the drawbridge and already know your name – Welcome Mr. Tanner! She'll be followed by another smiling person – Sit anywhere you like! Neither will mention that, by some mysterious power, your food will find you. "It's like magic!" a woman says to her family as they sit. "How do they find our table?" The family entered a matrix of technology the moment it crossed the moat, one geared toward anticipating their whims without offering the slightest clue how. How do they find our table? The answer is around their wrists. Their MagicBands, tech-studded wristbands available to every visitor to the Magic Kingdom, feature a long-range radio that can transmit more than 40 feet in every direction. The hostess, on her modified iPhone, received a signal when the family was just a few paces away. The Tanner family inbound! The kitchen also queued up: Two French onion soups, two roast beef sandwiches! When they sat down, a radio receiver in the table picked up the signals from their MagicBands and triangulated their location using another receiver in the ceiling. The server – as in waitperson, not computer array-knew what they ordered before they even approached the restaurant and knew where they were sitting. And it all worked seamlessly, like magic. No matter how often we say we're creeped out by technology, we tend to acclimate quickly if it delivers what we want before we want it. This is particularly true of context-aware technology. Just consider how little anyone seems to mind now that the Google Maps app mines your Gmail. Today, Google Maps is studded with your location searches, events you've arranged with friends, and landmarks you've chatted about. It's delightful, and it took hold faster than the goosebumps could. The utility seems so obvious, your consent has simply been assumed. The same idea is taking hold at Disney World: How did they find our table? The MagicBands look like simple, stylish rubber wristbands offered in cheery shades of grey, blue, green, pink, yellow, orange and red. Inside each is an RFID chip and a radio like those in a 2.4-GHz cordless phone. The wristband has enough battery to last two years. It may look unpretentious, but the band connects you to a vast and powerful system of sensors within the park. And yet, when you visit Disney World, the most remarkable thing about the MagicBands is that they don't feel remarkable at all. Despite their futuristic intentions, they're already invisible. Part of the trick lies in the clever way Disney teaches you to use them – and, by extension, how to use the park. It begins when you book your ticket online and pick your favourite rides.
Extracted text: Part of the trick lies in the clever way Disney teaches you to use them – and, by extension, how to use the park. It begins when you book your ticket online and pick your favourite rides. © The Independent Institute of Education (Pty) Ltd 2020 Page 4 of 8 16; 17; 18; 19; 20 2021 Disney's servers crunch your preferences, then neatly package them into an itinerary calculated to keep the route between stops from being a slog – or a frustrating zig-zag back and forth across the park. Then, in the weeks before your trip, the wristband arrives in the mail, etched with your name-'m yours, try me on. If you sign up in advance for the so-called "Magical Express," the MagicBand replaces all of the details and hassles of paper once you touch-down in Orlando. Express users can board a park-bound shuttle, and check into the hotel. They don't have to mind their luggage, because each piece gets tagged at your home airport, so that it can follow you to your hotel, then your room. Once you arrive at the park, there are no tickets to hand over. Just tap your MagicBand at the gate and swipe onto the rides you've already reserved. If you've opted in on the web, the MagicBand is the only thing you need. It's amazing how much friction Disney has engineered away: There's no need to rent a car or waste time at the baggage carousel. You don't need to carry cash, because the MagicBand is linked to your credit card. You don't need to wait in long lines. This is just what the experience looks like to you, the visitor. For Disney, the MagicBands, the thousands of sensors they talk with, and the 100 systems linked together to create MyMagicPlus turn the park into a giant computer - streaming real-time data about where guests are, what they're doing, and what they want. It's designed to anticipate your desires. Which makes it exactly the type of thing Apple, Facebook, and Google are trying to build. Disney shrouds its creative process in secrecy. This is both strategic and cultural: The company doesn't want its magic tainted by the messy realities behind the curtain. That's particularly true of the MagicBands. Piecing together their origin required more than two dozen interviews with executives at Disney and with designers and engineers who worked on the project but could speak only anonymously due to non-disclosure agreements. Though the team behind this sprawling platform eventually swelled to more than 1,000 people, the idea started years ago with a handful of insiders. By the summer of 2013, when MagicBands first trickled into public tests, they would change almost every detail of the meticulously plotted choreography that rules Disney World itself. "The whole system gave Disney a way of understanding the business," says Franklin, who stepped down last July as Disney's executive vice president of next-generation experience. "Knowing we need more food here, how people are flowing through the park, how people are consuming the experiential product." It also allows Disney to optimise employees. The goal was to create a system that would essentially replace the time spent fiddling with payments and tickets for moments of personal interactions with visitors.