Here is something that might surprise you: Walt Disney, that icon of American ingenuity, was in financial straits through most of his career. You probably thought he would have been a business genius — a model for others to study. But Disney was an atrocious businessman, constantly running his company into the ground. At the same time, though, he was a corporate visionary whose aversion to typical business practices led to the colossus that the Walt Disney Company became.

Before he was even old enough to legally sign the incorporation papers, Disney wrangled a few friends together, raised some cash and started Laugh-o-Gram, a studio in Kansas City, Mo., that made comic cartoon shorts based on fairy tales. But he seemed less interested in making money than in having fun, and the company promptly went bankrupt, sending Disney, by then 21, to Los Angeles to look for work in the film industry.

Image A video still from the Laugh-o-Gram cartoon "Jack the Giant Killer." Credit... Walt Disney Productions

He was saved when a New York distributor picked up a short he had made, featuring a real-life girl named Alice who lived in a cartoon world. Things went swimmingly for a while, even when the Alice films ran their course and Disney had to invent a new hit character, Oswald the Lucky Rabbit. But Disney was both financially reckless and egotistic. His distributor doubled-crossed him, surreptitiously poaching his animators, who bristled at his highhandedness. Since the distributor owned the rights to Oswald, Disney, then 27, had to start from scratch again.