Creativity inc. book review

I read this book in 2024 and it was such a beautiful experience. If you want to know the story of how Pixar started and what it takes to create and maintain a creative company or team, dive in!

Book info

Book title: Creativity, Inc.
Authors: Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace
Good reads link: https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077903-creativity-inc

Creativity Inc. in 10 key learnings

In this book the authors give a backstage view into the inner workings and philosophies that catapulted Pixar Animation Studios to the pinnacle of creative and cinematic achievement. Creativity Inc. is not just a story of Pixar’s history but a blueprint for fostering and maintaining a dynamic creative culture in any organization. I share my 10 takeaways:

Hire the right people – make sure that the team has the right talent to push the ideas forward. As Ed puts it in the book: “If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.” Pixar’s team not only had technical knowledge but also was passionate and obsessed with excellence and a deep attention to details.
Protect a new idea – new ideas can be ugly at the beginning. Ed Catmull describes it in the chapter titled “The ugly baby and the hungry beast”. The ugly baby is an analogy for new ideas. They are usually ugly, not ready to see the light, and still need care and iteration. The hungry beast refers to the needs of business. The beast needs to sell. For this dichotomy Ed mentions is important to protect new ideas and give them a safe space to flourish before they can be handed over to the beast.
Culture of constant improvement requires radical candor – one of the pillars of Pixar’s success was enabling a culture where improvement would come from anywhere. Management showed openness to receive feedback from employees, and gave open feedback. This was reflected in the Braintrust meetings that helped shape better stories and improve the output of Pixar thanks to everyone’s feedback. This was possible thanks to Pixar’s culture. When they implemented the Story Trust (copy of Braintrust) at Disney Animation initially, the result was different because people were afraid of telling what they thought, hurting someone else’s feelings, saying something dumb, or just going against what the leader thought was right.
Research is key – Something that John Lasseter promoted internally was the importance of research for when creating a new movie. Don’t look at other movies and try to be like them, let reality inspire you. For example, for Ratatouille the crew working on the project went to both Micheline stars restaurants and the sewers were the rats were in Paris. For Finding Nemo, the crew went to see fish and most of them got their diving certificate. For Monster’s University, they went to Ivy League universities to see life in campus and capture details of that reality. Get out of your office and go to the world to find inspiration!
Fail fast – Creative endeavours require to fail fast. The initial idea won’t look very much like the final product as a result of iteration and feedback. Try the concept early on with your audience and experts, and make sure that you incorporate the feedback. Directors in Pixar mastered this, and they didn’t get attached to their first prototypes. They also found new ways of sharing a concept without investing too much money up front such as the “Pitch Docter” tool (based on an idea from Pete Docter), where they could quickly share a concept without the need of investing too much resources in it. They also figured that having the script earlier and getting a product into animation only when most of it was already sorted out was a cost efficient way to produce a movie.
Decentralize fixing mistakes – As a manager Ed realized that people where better equipped to solve issues and they could do it faster than what management could. He made sure everyone in the company felt ownership of Pixar’s problems and was equipped to solve them without intermediation.
Keep openness to learning – Pixar University had different courses such as drawing, storytelling, belly dance, ballet, and others that promoted a culture of learning and kept everyone together. This allowed people to have always a beginner mind by learning things that were out of their expertise, while giving people an opportunity to connect with colleagues from different areas.
Make your people part of the company’s success – Whenever a Pixar movie reached the selling goals, everyone in the team received a bonus. That was an easy way to make them feel ownership of the results and make them part of Pixar’s success.
Don’t lower your guard – Since the beginning Ed Catmull shares that one of the questions that he had as a leader was why do successful companies start making mistakes that are obvious or seemingly unnecessary? He was always afraid this could happen to Pixar, so he kept a close eye on avoiding it. When Pixar grew from 45 employees to 1000+, there was a sense of complacency and fear of failure or changing things that had worked for making Pixar successful in the first place. Management came up with “Notes Day” so that they would reinsert the openness to change into the culture. The world changes and so should companies. The reason of why many of them fail is because they get too used to their own ways, and as a result stop innovating.
Finding great partners is key. There’s a part in the book where Lucasfilm wants to sell the computer division, due to financial pressure following to George Lucas’ divorce. Ed Catmull and Alvy Ray Smith were trying to find a partner that shared their vision of creating the first computer animated film. In 1986 Steve Jobs acquires the computer division for $5 million, and later invests $5 million more into the company that was later named Pixar. One of the conditions of the acquisition was that Pixar would focus initially on developing the Pixar Image Computer. After this failed, the Pixar team could focus on their mission of creating the first computer animated film, Toy Story. The role that Steve Jobs played in making Pixar what it is today went from providing financial stability to the right business strategy after he sold it to Disney. He allowed the team to do what they did best, while he used his talents for negotiation and business strategy to help them grow.

Aha moment!

My aha moment was: let passion be the fuel. Reading the story of how Pixar started first hand from Ed’s perspective, was very inspiring. I was compelled by his passion and dream of starting his own animated featured film. He was inspired as a kid by Walt Disney on dedicating his life to animated feature films. That dream never vanished, and as he realized his talent wasn’t for drawing he turned to his strengths (physics and maths) and took an unconventional path into animation that ended up creating the technology that now powers most of computer animated films. He was committed to making it happen, and he didn’t let anything to distract him from that goal. This type of stories make me tear up a bit, it feels good when people find the sweet spot between dreams and talents.

Some practical ideas after reading this book

Braintrust – in product development it is so important to build the right thing that a Braintrust could help do this first sanity check before launching something to the market. Open up a space where the only rule is to be ruthlessly honest. Share your prototype, your new idea, or your new launching campaign and invite the most talented people in the company in different areas. Let “your baby” be vulnerable and help it grow.
Dailies – Excellency requires certain obsession for quality and details. Pixar had a session every morning where there would be a review of the latest work in animation. By providing quick feedback during the development of a new feature film, it would improve the quality and identify set backs with a set frequency. The same can apply when developing a new product. Obsession to details matter. Make a product world class by obsessing with quality.
Learn, learn, learn – Make sure you and your team are always learning new things. They don’t need to be necessarily around their domain of expertise. Let yourselves be challenged by trying a new course together as a great opportunity to allow creativity flourish and bond as a team.
Dive deep in research – Experience what your user is experiencing. Get out of your office and find inspiration in the world. This might sound obvious, but not many companies take the time to go deep in learning everything they can about their end customer. Stop looking at the competition and by learning everything about your user, find the next great thing.