The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands his
2014 New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on
the management principles that built Pixar's singularly successful
culture, and on all he learned during the past nine years that allowed
Pixar to retain its creative culture while continuing to evolve.
"Might be the most thoughtful management book ever."--Fast Company
For nearly thirty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation,
producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Finding Nemo,
The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office
records and garner eighteen Academy Awards. The joyous storytelling, the
inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies
are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, Catmull reveals
the ideals and techniques that have made Pixar so widely admired--and so
profitable.
As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the first
computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream as a Ph.D. student, and
then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his
founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years
later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The
essential ingredient in that movie's success--and in the twenty-five
movies that followed--was the unique environment that Catmull and his
colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the
creative process and defy convention, such as:
- Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. But
give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or come
up with something better.
- It's not the manager's job to prevent risks. It's the manager's job to
make it safe for others to take them.
- The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of
fixing them.
- A company's communication structure should not mirror its
organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody.
Creativity, Inc. has been expanded to illuminate the continuing
development of the unique culture at Pixar. Featuring a new
introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts,
and new reflections at the end, this updated edition details how Catmull
built a culture that doesn't just pay lip service to the importance of
things like honesty, communication, and originality but commits to them.
Pursuing excellence isn't a one-off assignment but an ongoing, day-in,
day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.
