From a co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios--the Academy Award-winning studio behind Coco, Inside Out, and Toy Story--comes an incisive book about creativity in business and leadership for readers of Daniel Pink, Tom Peters, and Chip and Dan Heath.NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR BY The Huffington Post - Financial Times - Success - Inc. - Library JournalCreativity, Inc. is a manual for anyone who strives for originality and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation--into the meetings, postmortems, and "Braintrust" sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about creativity--but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, "an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible." For nearly twenty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, WALL-E, and Inside Out, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner thirty Academy Awards. The joyousness of the storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Here, in this book, 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 at the University of Utah, where many computer science pioneers got their start, and then forged a partnership with George Lucas that led, indirectly, to his co-founding Pixar in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie's success--and in the thirteen movies that followed--was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on leadership and management 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. - If you don't strive to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead. - 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.
I really love when commerce and creativity successfully mix. I also really love when someone runs a positive company well, with the well-being of its employees. It seems this was true for Pixar. Pixar, at the beginning, seemed like SUCH an exciting place to be. It's really interesting to watch its' journey unfold and the changes it endured. I learned many things and feel there are many valuable lessons to be found in this book. It also brought up nostalgia from childhood as they discuss the movies I saw and loved as a child(monsters INC!!!). Anyways, I think healthy companies create a healthy society and I love knowing there are a few good ones that exist in our often frustrating/frustrated country.
Describes how to run an innovative company
Published by John , 4 years ago
It talks about hierarchical structures for companies. How to keep all employees involved regardless of rank. There is a problem where employees are too afraid to innovate or speak up, assuming that their superiors know best.
Freedom to think, to work, come up with improvements is important. Maintaining a status quo won't last long.
I was shocked to see how much Steve Jobs had done for Pixar. I had no idea he was part of it. Truly inspirational. His ability to invest 10+ years into the future shows.
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