And they conduct project post-mortems in ways that extract the most valuable lessons for mitigating risk on subsequent projects. They make it safe for people to share unfinished work with peers, who provide candid feedback.

For example, they give writers, artists, and other “creatives” enormous leeway to make decisions. How? As Catmull explains, Pixar’s leaders have discovered potent practices for structuring and operating a creative organization. Unexpected ideas, all-yet Pixar Animation Studios is turning these and other novel ideas into blockbuster films. A suburban family of superheroes defeats a power-hungry villain. For example, Catmull comes to the orientation sessions for all new hires, where he talks about the mistakes Pixar has made so people don’t assume that just because the company is successful, everything it does is right.Ī robot falls in love in a post-apocalyptic world. Strong leadership is essential to make sure people don’t pay lip service to those standards. Clear values, constant communication, routine postmortems, and the regular injection of outsiders who will challenge the status quo are necessary but not enough to stay on the rails. Mindful of the rise and fall of so many tech companies, Catmull has also sought ways to continually challenge Pixar’s assumptions and search for the flaws that could destroy its culture. The trick to fostering collective creativity, Catmull says, is threefold: Place the creative authority for product development firmly in the hands of the project leaders (as opposed to corporate executives) build a culture and processes that encourage people to share their work-in-progress and support one another as peers and dismantle the natural barriers that divide disciplines. In filmmaking and many other kinds of complex product development, creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many inherently unforeseeable problems. And it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how to manage the large risks inherent in producing breakthroughs. That notion, he says, is rooted in a misguided view of creativity that exaggerates the importance of the initial idea in developing an original product.

Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, couldn’t disagree more. Many people believe that good ideas are rarer and more valuable than good people.

Creativity inc book pixar