Welcome to Edition #61 of Did You Know? (DYK), the weekly newsletter by Gorick Ng, Harvard career adviser and Wall Street Journal Bestselling Author of The Unspoken Rules, where we deconstruct the untold story of how someone (or something) became successful—and what you can do to follow in their footsteps.
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Did You Know? Don’t reinvent the wheel!
(1) A story from the past
Did you know? Disney’s biggest movies are actually adaptations of other people’s stories.
You may have heard of the movie Frozen (2013). It made over $1 billion in box office sales, has its own dedicated theme park ride at the Walt Disney World Resort in Florida, and even had a top 5 Billboard Hot 100 song—Let It Go—that “defined the decade [2010].”
But did you know that Frozen is an adaptation of an 1800s fairy tale called “The Snow Queen” by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen?
It turns out that Frozen is merely the tip of the iceberg (pun intended). Other Disney fan favorites that were adapted from books include:
- 101 Dalmatians (1961)
- The Adventures of Ichabod and Mr. Toad (1949)
- Aladdin (1992)
- Alice in Wonderland (1951)
- Bambi (1942)
- Beauty and the Beast (1991)
- The Black Cauldron (1985)
- Cinderella (1950)
- The Great Mouse Detective (1986)
- The Hunchback of Notre Dame (1996)
- The Jungle Book (1967)
- The Little Mermaid (1989)
- The Many Adventures of Winnie the Pooh (1977)
- Meet the Robinsons (2007)
- Oliver and Company (1988)
- Peter Pan (1953)
- Pinocchio (1940)
- The Princess and the Frog (2009)
- The Rescuers (1977)
- Sleeping Beauty (1959)
- Snow White and Seven Dwarfs (1937)
- Tangled (2010)
- Tarzan (1999)
- Treasure Planet (2002)
That means that at least 25 stories written and published by other people also helped Disney make billions in adaptations.So, why is Disney’s approach not considered plagiarism or copyright infringement?
The technical answer is that the stories that Disney adapted into movies were no longer under any form of copyright protection. For example, Cinderella and Sleeping Beauty were both first published in 1697 by the French author Charles Perrault, then edited and re-published in fairy tale collections from 1812 to 1858 by German historians Jacob and Wilhelm Grimm.
But you still might be thinking to yourself, “Wait… I was always told in school that plagiarism is bad. Even if copyright protections expire, wouldn’t that go against everything I’ve been taught?!”
Yes—and no.
Yes, because others’ work that is adapted into a new form or used elsewhere belongs to their original creators, who deserve attribution and/or royalties.
No, because “everything has already been done.”
Stanley Kubrick, director of The Shining (1980), which is an adaptation of The Shining (1977) by prolific horror author Stephen King, said it best: “Everything has already been done. Every story has been told, every scene has been shot. It's our job to do it one better.”
Kubrick was talking about filming: angles, lighting, how plot develops through shots and post-processing editing. He very well could have been talking about Star Wars, whose storytelling perspective was adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress (1958), or any number of movies that “borrow” from another.
Indeed, adaptations in cinema aren’t all that different from adaptations in other industries. Consider copycat products and services like Oreo and Hydrox or FedEx and UPS or Nintendo and Sega (among others). There are more similarities than differences!
The reality is that building off of others’ work is inevitable. There’s even a word for this: “cumulative innovation”—a fancy way of saying that everything that we enjoy today builds on something that was created yesterday.
In the case of Frozen, writers took “The Snow Queen,” a story that featured a witch “in complete control of her sorcery” with “nefarious” intentions, and turned it into a queen who is “still understanding her supernatural side… and wants to fulfill her self-realization on her own terms.”
The result?
A more relatable story about the power of being different crammed with memorable sing-alongs and lovable creatures, leading to a franchise that has now generated $14 billion in revenue.
And this is just one of 25 examples… and counting!
What does this mean for you? The next time you find yourself trying to come up with a new idea, whether for work, a startup, or a passion project, remember Disney, who took something that already existed—and gave it a new spin.
(2) A strategy for your future
Did you know? You don’t need to reinvent the wheel.
Has this ever happened to you?
- Your manager asks you to do something
- You smile and nod
- You open your laptop
- You stare at your blinking cursor and don’t know where to begin
Sometimes you need clearer instructions. Other times, you need an example, or what I call “precedents.” Precedents are things that already exist, like Hans Christian Andersen’s “The Snow Queen.”
Building a PowerPoint presentation or Excel model?
- Try asking, “Is there a prior version or template I should build off of?”
Writing a paper?
- Try asking, “Is there an example of an A+ piece of work I could look to for inspiration?”
Building something new?
- Try asking, “What’s the closest example I could emulate or use as a starting point?”
I know it because I’ve experienced it: My first step to writing The Unspoken Rules wasn’t to open a blank Word document—it was to go to a nearby bookstore, walk down the aisle of business and self-help books, and skim every book that was already in my category.
Similarly, my first step to creating How to Say It wasn’t to open Canva—it was to go to Paper Source and browse card decks that were already being sold. This wasn’t meant to discourage me. It was, instead, meant to give me a sense of what already exists—and, moreover, what doesn’t yet exist.
Find the precedent!
Gorick
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Sources
- defined the decade [2010]
- an adaptation of an 1800s fairy tale called “The Snow Queen” by Danish author Hans Christian Andersen
- at least 25 stories
- first published in 1697 by the French author Charles Perrault
- adapted from Akira Kurosawa’s The Hidden Fortress (1958)
- borrow
- “in complete control of her sorcery”
- being different
- memorable sing-alongs
- lovable creatures
- that has now generated $14 billion in revenue
