Michael Eisner Is A 'Joke Thief'

Newly branded Internet visionary Michael Eisner is making full use of the web.

My pal Jeff Bercovici, newly blogging at Portfolio.com, attended the World Business Forum held at Radio City Music Hall where the dumped Disney chieftain had the audience laughing with an extended riff on conventional business thinking.

"All too often in business we put an incredible amount of energy into uninspiring ideas," Eisner began, before quoting a saying he attributed to the "Dakota Indians": "When you discover you're riding a dead horse, the best strategy is to dismount and get on a new one."

He continued, "Many companies, when faced with this dilemma, would make another choice, such as 1. Buy a stronger whip, 2. Appoint a committee to study the horse, 3. Arrange to visit other sites to see how they ride dead horses, 4. Lower the standard so that dead horses can be included, 5. reclassify the dead horse as 'living-impaired.'"

But when Bercovici later entered "Dakota Indians" and "dead horse" in Google, he found a website that was the source of Eisner's shtick.

Now here's the problem: the subject of Eisner's talk was "creativity".