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Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True InspirationAmazon Videos

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Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration Hardcover – April 8, 2014

by Ed Catmull (Author), Amy Wallace (Author)

4.7 10,385 ratings

Goodreads Choice Award nominee

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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 Journal

Creativity, 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.

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Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right.
Highlighted by 10,203 Kindle readers
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.
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Getting the right people and the right chemistry is more important than getting the right idea.
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Find, develop, and support good people, and they in turn will find, develop, and own good ideas.
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WARNING: California’s Proposition 65

Editorial Reviews

Review

“Just might be the best business book ever written.”—Forbes

“Achieving enormous success while holding fast to the highest artistic standards is a nice trick—and Pixar, with its creative leadership and persistent commitment to innovation, has pulled it off. This book should be required reading for any manager.”—Charles Duhigg, author of The Power of Habit

“Steve Jobs—not a man inclined to hyperbole when asked about the qualities of others—once described Ed Catmull as ‘very wise,’ ‘very self-aware,’ ‘really thoughtful,’ ‘really, really smart,’ and possessing ‘quiet strength,’ all in a single interview. Any reader of Creativity, Inc., Catmull’s new book on the art of running creative companies, will have to agree. Catmull, president of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation, has written what just might be the most thoughtful management book ever.”—Fast Company

“It’s one thing to be creative; it’s entirely another—and much more rare—to build a great and creative culture. Over more than thirty years, Ed Catmull has developed methods to root out and destroy the barriers to creativity, to marry creativity to the pursuit of excellence, and, most impressive, to sustain a culture of disciplined creativity during setbacks and success. Pixar’s unrivaled record, and the joy its films have added to our lives, gives his method the most important validation: It works.”—Jim Collins, co-author of Built to Last and author of Good to Great

“Too often, we seek to keep the status quo working. This is a book about breaking it.”—Seth Godin

“What is the secret to making more of the good stuff? Every so often Hollywood embraces a book that it senses might provide the answer. . . . Catmull’s book is quickly becoming the latest bible for the show business crowd.”—The New York Times

“The most practical and deep book ever written by a practitioner on the topic of innovation.”—Prof. Gary P. Pisano, Harvard Business School

“Business gurus love to tell stories about Pixar, but this is our first chance to hear the real story from someone who lived it and led it. Everyone interested in managing innovation—or just good managing—needs to read this book.”—Chip Heath, co-author of Switch and Decisive

“A fascinating story about how some very smart people built something that profoundly changed the animation business and, along the way, popular culture . . . [Creativity, Inc.] is a well-told tale, full of detail about an interesting, intricate business. For fans of Pixar films, it’s a must-read. For fans of management books, it belongs on the ‘value added’ shelf.”—The Wall Street Journal

“Pixar uses technology only as a means to an end; its films are rooted in human concerns, not computer wizardry. The same can be said of Creativity Inc., Ed Catmull’s endearingly thoughtful explanation of how the studio he co-founded generated hits such as the Toy Story trilogy, Up and Wall-E. . . . [Catmull] uses Pixar’s triumphs and near-disasters to outline a system for managing people in creative businesses—one in which candid criticism is delivered sensitively, while individuality and autonomy are not strangled by a robotic corporate culture.”—Financial Times

“A wonderful new book . . . Unlike most books written by founders, this isn’t some myth-heavy legacy project—it’s far closer to a blueprint. Catmull takes us inside the Pixar ecosystem and shows how they build and refine excellence, in revelatory detail. . . . If you do creative work, you should read it, now.”—Daniel Coyle, author of The Talent Code

“A superb debut intended for managers in all fields of endeavor . . . He takes readers inside candid discussions and retreats at which participants, assuming the early versions of movies are bad, explore ways to improve them. Unusually rich in ideas, insights and experiences, the book celebrates the benefits of an open, nurturing work environment. An immensely readable and rewarding book that will challenge and inspire readers to make their workplaces hotbeds of creativity.”—Kirkus Reviews (starred review)

“Punctuated with surprising tales of how the company’s films were developed and the company’s financial struggles, Catmull shares insights about harnessing talent, creating teams, protecting the creative process, candid communications, organizational structures, alignment, and the importance of storytelling. . . . [Creativity, Inc.] will delight and inspire creative individuals and their managers, as well as anyone who wants to work ‘in an environment that fosters creativity and problem solving.’”—Publishers Weekly (starred review)

“For anyone managing anything, and particularly those trying to manage creative teams, Catmull is like a kind, smart godfather guiding us toward managing wisely, without losing our souls, and in a way that works toward greatness. Perhaps it’s all Up from there.”—The Christian Science Monitor

“Many have attempted to formulate and categorize inspiration and creativity. What Ed Catmull shares instead is his astute experience that creativity isn’t strictly a well of ideas, but an alchemy of people. In Creativity, Inc. Ed reveals, with commonsense specificity and honesty, examples of how not to get in your own way and how to realize a creative coalescence of art, business, and innovation.”—George Lucas

“This is the best book ever written on what it takes to build a creative organization. It is the best because Catmull’s wisdom, modesty, and self-awareness fill every page. He shows how Pixar’s greatness results from connecting the specific little things they do (mostly things that anyone can do in any organization) to the big goal that drives everyone in the company: making films that make them feel proud of one another.”—Robert I. Sutton, Stanford professor and author of The No A**hole Rule and co-author of Scaling Up Excellence

About the Author

Ed Catmull is co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation. He has been honored with five Academy Awards, including the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for lifetime achievement in the field of computer graphics, and the ACM A.M. Turing Award for major contributions of lasting importance to computing. He received his Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Utah. He lives in San Francisco with his wife and children.

Amy Wallace is a journalist whose work has appeared in GQ, The New Yorker, Wired, Los Angeles Times, and The New York Times Magazine. She currently serves as editor-at-large at Los Angeles Times magazine. Previously, she worked as a reporter and editor at the Los Angeles Times and wrote a monthly column for The New York Times Sunday Business section. She lives in Los Angeles.

Excerpt. © Reprinted by permission. All rights reserved.

Chapter 1

Animated

For thirteen years we had a table in the large conference room at Pixar that we call West One. Though it was beautiful, I grew to hate this table. It was long and skinny, like one of those things you’d see in a comedy sketch about an old wealthy couple that sits down for dinner—one person at either end, a candelabra in the middle—and has to shout to make conversation. The table had been chosen by a designer Steve Jobs liked, and it was elegant, all right—but it impeded our work.

We’d hold regular meetings about our movies around that table—thirty of us facing off in two long lines, often with more people seated along the walls—and everyone was so spread out that it was difficult to communicate. For those unlucky enough to be seated at the far ends, ideas didn’t flow because it was nearly impossible to make eye contact without craning your neck. Moreover, because it was important that the director and producer of the film in question be able to hear what everyone was saying, they had to be placed at the center of the table. So did Pixar’s creative leaders: John Lasseter, Pixar’s creative officer, and me, and a handful of our most experienced directors, producers, and writers. To ensure that these people were always seated together, someone began making place cards. We might as well have been at a formal dinner party.

When it comes to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless. That’s what I believe. But unwittingly, we were allowing this table—and the resulting place card ritual—to send a different message. The closer you were seated to the middle of the table, it implied, the more important—the more central—you must be. And the farther away, the less likely you were to speak up—your distance from the heart of the conversation made participating feel intrusive. If the table was crowded, as it often was, still more people would sit in chairs around the edges of the room, creating yet a third tier of participants (those at the center of the table, those at the ends, and those not at the table at all). Without intending to, we’d created an obstacle that discouraged people from jumping in.

Over the course of a decade, we held countless meetings around this table in this way—completely unaware of how doing so undermined our own core principles. Why were we blind to this? Because the seating arrangements and place cards were designed for the convenience of the leaders, including me. Sincerely believing that we were in an inclusive meeting, we saw nothing amiss because we didn’t feel excluded. Those not sitting at the center of the table, meanwhile, saw quite clearly how it established a pecking order but presumed that we—the leaders—had intended that outcome. Who were they, then, to complain?

It wasn’t until we happened to have a meeting in a smaller room with a square table that John and I realized what was wrong. Sitting around that table, the interplay was better, the exchange of ideas more free-flowing, the eye contact automatic. Every person there, no matter their job title, felt free to speak up. This was not only what we wanted, it was a fundamental Pixar belief: Unhindered communication was key, no matter what your position. At our long, skinny table, comfortable in our middle seats, we had utterly failed to recognize that we were behaving contrary to that basic tenet. Over time, we’d fallen into a trap. Even though we were conscious that a room’s dynamics are critical to any good discussion, even though we believed that we were constantly on the lookout for problems, our vantage point blinded us to what was right before our eyes.

Emboldened by this new insight, I went to our facilities department. “Please,” I said, “I don’t care how you do it, but get that table out of there.” I wanted something that could be arranged into a more intimate square, so people could address each other directly and not feel like they didn’t matter. A few days later, as a critical meeting on an upcoming movie approached, our new table was installed, solving the problem.

Still, interestingly, there were remnants of that problem that did not immediately vanish just because we’d solved it. For example, the next time I walked into West One, I saw the brand-new table, arranged—as requested—in a more intimate square that made it possible for more people to interact at once. But the table was adorned with the same old place cards! While we’d fixed the key problem that had made place cards seem necessary, the cards themselves had become a tradition that would continue until we specifically dismantled it. This wasn’t as troubling an issue as the table itself, but it was something we had to address because cards implied hierarchy, and that was precisely what we were trying to avoid. When Andrew Stanton, one of our directors, entered the meeting room that morning, he grabbed several place cards and began randomly moving them around, narrating as he went. “We don’t need these anymore!” he said in a way that everyone in the room grasped. Only then did we succeed in eliminating this ancillary problem.

This is the nature of management. Decisions are made, usually for good reasons, which in turn prompt other decisions. So when problems arise—and they always do—disentangling them is not as simple as correcting the original error. Often, finding a solution is a multi-step endeavor. There is the problem you know you are trying to solve—think of that as an oak tree—and then there are all the other problems—think of these as saplings—that sprouted from the acorns that fell around it. And these problems remain after you cut the oak tree down.

Even after all these years, I’m often surprised to find problems that have existed right in front of me, in plain sight. For me, the key to solving these problems is finding ways to see what’s working and what isn’t, which sounds a lot simpler than it is. Pixar today is managed according to this principle, but in a way I’ve been searching all my life for better ways of seeing. It began decades before Pixar even existed.

When I was a kid, I used to plunk myself down on the living room floor of my family’s modest Salt Lake City home a few minutes before 7 p.m. every Sunday and wait for Walt Disney. Specifically, I’d wait for him to appear on our black-and-white RCA with its tiny 12-inch screen. Even from a dozen feet away—the accepted wisdom at the time was that viewers should put one foot between them and the TV for every inch of screen—I was transfixed by what I saw.

Each week, Walt Disney himself opened the broadcast of The Wonderful World of Disney. Standing before me in suit and tie, like a kindly neighbor, he would demystify the Disney magic. He’d explain the use of synchronized sound in Steamboat Willie or talk about the importance of music in Fantasia. He always went out of his way to give credit to his forebears, the men—and, at this point, they were all men—who’d done the pioneering work upon which he was building his empire. He’d introduce the television audience to trailblazers such as Max Fleischer, of Koko the Clown and Betty Boop fame, and Winsor McCay, who made Gertie the Dinosaur—the first animated film to feature a character that expressed emotion—in 1914. He’d gather a group of his animators, colorists, and storyboard artists to explain how they made Mickey Mouse and Donald Duck come to life. Each week, Disney created a made-up world, used cutting-edge technology to enable it, and then told us how he’d done it.

Walt Disney was one of my two boyhood idols. The other was Albert Einstein. To me, even at a young age, they represented the two poles of creativity. Disney was all about inventing the new. He brought things into being—both artistically and technologically—that did not exist before. Einstein, by contrast, was a master of explaining that which already was. I read every Einstein biography I could get my hands on as well as a little book he wrote on his theory of relativity. I loved how the concepts he developed forced people to change their approach to physics and matter, to view the universe from a different perspective. Wild-haired and iconic, Einstein dared to bend the implications of what we thought we knew. He solved the biggest puzzles of all and, in doing so, changed our understanding of reality.

Both Einstein and Disney inspired me, but Disney affected me more because of his weekly visits to my family’s living room. “When you wish upon a star, makes no difference who you are,” his TV show’s theme song would announce as a baritone-voiced narrator promised: “Each week, as you enter this timeless land, one of these many worlds will open to you . . . .” Then the narrator would tick them off: Frontierland (“tall tales and true from the legendary past”), Tomorrowland (“the promise of things to come”), Adventureland (“the wonder world of nature’s own realm”), and Fantasyland (“the happiest kingdom of them all”). I loved the idea that animation could take me places I’d never been. But the land I most wanted to learn about was the one occupied by the innovators at Disney who made these animated films.

Between 1950 and 1955, Disney made three movies we consider classics today: Cinderella, Peter Pan, and Lady and the Tramp. More than half a century later, we all remember the glass slipper, the Island of Lost Boys, and that scene where the cocker spaniel and the mutt slurp spaghetti. But few grasp how technically sophisticated these movies were. Disney’s animators were at the forefront of applied technology; instead of merely using existing methods, they were inventing ones of their own. They had to develop the tools to perfect sound and color, to use blue screen matting and multi-plane cameras and xerography. Every time some technological breakthrough occurred, Walt Disney incorporated it and then talked about it on his show in a way that highlighted the relationship between technology and art. I was too young to realize such a synergy was groundbreaking. To me, it just made sense that they belonged together.

Watching Disney one Sunday evening in April of 1956, I experienced something that would define my professional life. What exactly it was is difficult to describe except to say that I felt something fall into place inside my head. That night’s episode was called “Where Do the Stories Come From?” and Disney kicked it off by praising his animators’ knack for turning everyday occurrences into cartoons. That night, though, it wasn’t Disney’s explanation that pulled me in but what was happening on the screen as he spoke. An artist was drawing Donald Duck, giving him a jaunty costume and a bouquet of flowers and a box of candy with which to woo Daisy. Then, as the artist’s pencil moved around the page, Donald came to life, putting up his dukes to square off with the pencil lead, then raising his chin to allow the artist to give him a bow tie.

The definition of superb animation is that each character on the screen makes you believe it is a thinking being. Whether it’s a T-Rex or a slinky dog or a desk lamp, if viewers sense not just movement but intention—or, put another way, emotion—then the animator has done his or her job. It’s not just lines on paper anymore; it’s a living, feeling entity. This is what I experienced that night, for the first time, as I watched Donald leap off the page. The transformation from a static line drawing to a fully dimensional, animated image was sleight of hand, nothing more, but the mystery of how it was done—not just the technical process but the way the art was imbued with such emotion—was the most interesting problem I’d ever considered. I wanted to climb through the TV screen and be part of this world.

The mid-1950s and early 1960s were, of course, a time of great prosperity and industry in the United States. Growing up in Utah in a tight-knit Mormon community, my four younger brothers and sisters and I felt that anything was possible. Because the adults we knew had all lived through the Depression, World War II, and then the Korean War, this period felt to them like the calm after a thunderstorm.

I remember the optimistic energy—an eagerness to move forward that was enabled and supported by a wealth of emerging technologies. It was boom time in America, with manufacturing and home construction at an all-time high. Banks were offering loans and credit, which meant more and more people could own a new TV, house, or Cadillac. There were amazing new appliances like disposals that ate your garbage and machines that washed your dishes, although I certainly did my share of cleaning them by hand. The first organ transplants were performed in 1954; the first polio vaccine came a year later; in 1956, the term artificial intelligence entered the lexicon. The future, it seemed, was already here.

Then, when I was twelve, the Soviets launched the first artificial satellite—Sputnik 1—into earth’s orbit. This was huge news, not just in the scientific and political realms but in my sixth grade classroom at school, where the morning routine was interrupted by a visit from the principal, whose grim expression told us that our lives had changed forever. Since we’d been taught that the Communists were the enemy and that nuclear war could be waged at the touch of a button, the fact that they’d beaten us into space seemed pretty scary—proof that they had the upper hand.

The United States government’s response to being bested was to create something called ARPA, or the Advanced Research Projects Agency. Though it was housed within the Defense Department, its mission was ostensibly peaceful: to support scientific researchers in America’s universities in the hopes of preventing what it termed “technological surprise.” By sponsoring our best minds, the architects of ARPA believed, we’d come up with better answers. Looking back, I still admire that enlightened reaction to a serious threat: We’ll just have to get smarter. ARPA would have a profound effect on America, leading directly to the computer revolution and the Internet, among countless other innovations. There was a sense that big things were happening in America, with much more to come. Life was full of possibility.

Still, while my family was middle-class, our outlook was shaped by my father’s upbringing. Not that he talked about it much. Earl Catmull, the son of an Idaho dirt farmer, was one of fourteen kids, five of whom had died as infants. His mother, raised by Mormon pioneers who made a meager living panning for gold in the Snake River in Idaho, didn’t attend school until she was 11. My father was the first in his family ever to go to college, paying his own way by working several jobs. During my childhood, he taught math during the school year and built houses during the summers. He built our house from the ground up. While he never explicitly said that education was paramount, my siblings and I all knew we were expected to study hard and go to college.

Product details

Publisher ‏ : ‎ Random House; 1st edition (April 8, 2014)
Language ‏ : ‎ English
Hardcover ‏ : ‎ 368 pages
ISBN-10 ‏ : ‎ 0812993012
ISBN-13 ‏ : ‎ 978-0812993011
Item Weight ‏ : ‎ 1.45 pounds
Dimensions ‏ : ‎ 6.35 x 1.06 x 9.52 inches

Best Sellers Rank: #56,992 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)
- #211 in Creativity (Books)
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- #877 in Leadership & Motivation

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Ed Catmull
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Edwin Earl "Ed" Catmull (born March 31, 1945) is a computer scientist and current president of Pixar Animation Studios and Walt Disney Animation Studios (including the latter's DisneyToon Studios division). As a computer scientist, Catmull has contributed to many important developments in computer graphics.
Bio from Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Photo by VES_Awards_89.jpg: Jeff Heusser derivative work: Ahonc (This file was derived from VES Awards 89.jpg:) [CC BY 2.0 (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/2.0)], via Wikimedia Commons.
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Amy Wallace
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Amy Wallace is an American journalist and author. She is the co-author, with Ed Catmull, of the 2014 bestselling book Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Her magazine work, which has been twice nominated for a National Magazine Award, has appeared in Esquire, Elle, GQ, Men’s Journal, New York, the New York Times Magazine, The New Yorker, and Vanity Fair, among other publications. She lives in Pasadena, California.
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Customers find the book insightful and well-written. They appreciate its engaging style and creative approach to business practices. The book provides a foundational resource for design thinking, leadership, and management. Readers describe the book as charming, attractive, and brilliant. They find it effective and useful, with honest stories of what worked and what didn't.

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Customers find the book insightful and valuable. It provides a unique perspective on the dynamics of Pixar and offers well-reasoned advice. The book is described as entertaining, thought-provoking, and inspiring.

"...The four chapters, Animated, Pixar Is Born, A Defining Goal, and Establishing Pixar’s Identity, tell the story of Ed Catmull and Pixar up until the..." Read more

"...common-sense, straightforward presentation, the author presents a great framework for anyone interested understanding and improving corporate culture..." Read more

"...The common theme is -loosen controls, accept risk , trust colleagues, work to clear the path for them and pay attention to anything that creates fear..." Read more

"...to invent and innovate to stay alive, it is also an excellent book for school leaders and leaders of any organization to read in order to answer the..." Read more

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Customers find the book engaging and well-written. They describe it as a must-read for business enthusiasts, offering a great framework and insights. The book is described as entertaining, thought-provoking, and insightful.

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"...With a conversational tone and common-sense, straightforward presentation, the author presents a great framework for anyone interested understanding..." Read more

"...book remain true to what he repeats throughout the book: creativity is about the story, and in this book he tells an engaging one for those..." Read more

"...Catmull’s engaging storytelling style brings us into the actual questions and crises he personally experienced while growing into his leadership role..." Read more

123 customers mention "Creativity"113 positive10 negative

Customers find the book encouraging creativity and innovation. They say it provides a unique perspective on design thinking, leadership, and management. Readers mention that the book serves as a foundational resource on design thinking, leadership and management. The book also provides lessons on culture and how to treat people.

"...That is the book in a nutshell. Catmull covers a lot of ground and many topics, but the core book is about how he, John Lasseter, and other people..." Read more

"...5. Short Experiments. Experimentation often leads to innovation, learning, and the development of skills that can be utilized on larger projects...." Read more

"...as a 6 due to the fact that he seemed to have been successful at reproducing the Pixar culture at a fledgling Disney Animation Studios, which he and..." Read more

"...By delving into these connections, the book provides a unique and valuable perspective on the dynamics of collaboration and leadership in the..." Read more

113 customers mention "Engaging"113 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and entertaining. It provides a thrilling glimpse into the author's passion for adventure. They find it interesting to learn about the creative process of making a Pixar film. The book is a great read for collaborative environments that encourage creativity and leadership. The tone of writing feels conversational, like being mentored.

"...the book: creativity is about the story, and in this book he tells an engaging one for those fascinated with creativity and how it might be fostered..." Read more

""Creativity Inc" offers a captivating and insightful journey into the inner workings of Pixar, providing readers with a fascinating look at the..." Read more

"...story of Pixar is just so inspiring and informative, it’s worth the occasional grind." Read more

"...It’s just a very fun, honest, and insightful read...." Read more

27 customers mention "Look"27 positive0 negative

Customers find the book engaging and insightful. They appreciate the beautiful facility and the reason behind its design. The attractive films and animation are also appealing. The book provides a charming, brilliant look into Pixar's culture and development. Overall, readers enjoy the excellent background on the development of the dream.

"...He believes only then can progress begin. This book is appealing and relevant because it is not telling what one should do and how they..." Read more

"This book is an excellent illustration of a practical way to manage a successful, creative rich company...." Read more

"This is an honest and revealing look at the unique challenges faced by a creative company...." Read more

"...I enjoyed the book overall and the excellent background on the development of his dream." Read more

25 customers mention "Effectiveness"25 positive0 negative

Customers find the book useful and effective for creating an innovative culture. They appreciate the honest stories and practical advice from the author. The book provides immediate results and is suitable for anyone seeking extraordinary results.

"...look at the culture that underpins one of the most innovative and successful animation studios in the world...." Read more

"...of not just leading a creative process, but creating a safe, effective, and innovative culture in any business through telling the story of Pixar..." Read more

"Excellent in so many ways...." Read more

"Insightful, self-aware, reflective, practical (not too idealistic), empowering, logical, not much baloney and rhetoric, balanced...." Read more

23 customers mention "Heartfelt writing"23 positive0 negative

Customers find the writing heartfelt and inspiring. They appreciate the author's ability to apply humanity and emotions while coordinating well. The book allows readers to be both empathetic and learn from the journey, confirming their feelings.

"...He is humble, caring, trusting, and brutally honest...." Read more

"...It was poignant and insightful. It speaks to another truth in that the Myth is not the Man." Read more

"...Steve Jobs appears as a much more fully developed and sympathetic human than the usual media picture of him...." Read more

"...but I can say that Mr. Catmull has shared his gifts for reflection, empathy, and indefatigable desire for improvement, along with unfailing..." Read more

18 customers mention "Narrative quality"0 positive18 negative

Customers find the narrative too detailed and repetitive. They feel the book lacks discussion of stories and more analysis of corporate wrangling. They also mention it feels more like an autobiography with weak metaphors and shallow sloganeering. Some readers feel the book is lengthy and boring, though it has good wisdom.

"...It is just that given Ed is the lord of Animation, the book tends to get repetitive and taxing for someone like me who is not really an animation fan..." Read more

"...It was all great information, but it did get a little repetitive and that’s where I felt it lacked a slight bit of organization...." Read more

"...Catmull's book is a good leadership one but a poor history, and the opposite is true for "The Pixar Touch"...that's why I rate in in between as a '..." Read more

"...However, I found it less educational and useful in regards to management ideas, tactics and strategies...." Read more

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Wally Bock
The best book I've read on fostering creativity and innovation in a company -- must-read for managers
Reviewed in the United States on June 20, 2017
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Creativity Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in The Way of True Inspiration is the intertwined stories of Ed Catmull and Pixar Animation. It’s more than that, though. It may be the best book you’ll ever read about how leaders and organizations can make it possible for people to use their whole creative brain power. I know that’s a bold statement. Here’s why I make it.

There is a vast literature out there about how individual people can tap into their natural, God-given creativity. There’s no one best book in this crop, but if you find one that works for you, that one’s the best as far as you’re concerned.

There’s not a lot about how organizations and leaders can unleash creativity and most of it is platitudes on parade. We’re told to “fail fast and fail often” as if failing was the point. It’s not. Learning is the point. We’re told to tell people they should not be afraid to fail. What nonsense. Nobody likes to fail, and if they’re afraid to fail, it’s not their fault. It’s yours. We’re also given that advice as if there is an alternative to doing creative cutting-edge work without getting it wrong, mostly at the beginning. There isn’t. That’s the way the world works.

Some writers do a better job on this by talking about ways you can structure things so that a failure is more likely to be seen as a learning experience and where criticism and bad news can be received as gifts rather than attacks. But there’s precious little in those books about how you actually make it work and then keep it working over time.

Creativity Inc is different. The primary reason is Ed Catmull and his willingness to talk about the details of both his and Pixar’s journeys. Here’s what I consider the key quote from very early in the book.

“What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; but we work hard to uncover those problems, even if doing so means making ourselves uncomfortable; and that when we come across a problem, we marshal all of our energies to solve it.”

Early in the book, Catmull tells the story of a table in a meeting room at Pixar. The table, evidently, looks like most of the tables in most meeting rooms that I’ve been in. It was rectangular. Most of us have heard that tables with that shape aren’t exactly symbols of an egalitarian culture and that they stifle open discussion. But we keep meeting around those tables. So did Pixar.

“Over the course of a decade, we held countless meetings around this table in this way – completely unaware of how doing so undermined our own core principles.”

When Catmull and his crew become aware of the effect of the table, they change it. Good for them. Then they discover that there are other behaviors that may have been linked to the table originally but continue after the table is changed. For example, on the old table there were place cards indicating where people sat. Powerful people at the ends, junior people toward the middle. The new square table removed the power of shape but the place cards had become common practice, too. So, when Catmull came into the room for a meeting around the new table, he found place cards indicating where everyone should sit.

That is the book in a nutshell. Catmull covers a lot of ground and many topics, but the core book is about how he, John Lasseter, and other people at Pixar, uncovered problems and worked to solve them, nurtured creative energy, and dealt with the inevitable conflicts and surprises. Every organization that I’ve ever worked with or visited has had similar issues.

One problem putting together the review for this book is that it is simply riddled with wisdom. So, rather than give you the standard chapter summaries that I put in most reviews, I’m going to list each of the four sections and name the chapters that are in it, then share some quotes from that section. I’m sure that when you read the book, you will find your own insightful bits that are different from mine.

Part 1 is called Getting Started. The four chapters, Animated, Pixar Is Born, A Defining Goal, and Establishing Pixar’s Identity, tell the story of Ed Catmull and Pixar up until the success of “Toy Story.”

"I also didn’t yet know that my self-assigned mission was about much more than technology. To pull it off, we’d have to be creative not only technically but also in the ways that we worked together."

"What had drawn me to science, all those years ago, was the search for understanding. Human interaction is far more complex than relativity or string theory, of course, but that only made it more interesting and important; it constantly challenged my presumptions. As we made more movies, I would learn that some of my beliefs about why and how Pixar had been successful were wrong. But one thing could not have been more plain: Figuring out how to build a sustainable creative culture—one that didn’t just pay lip service to the importance of things like honesty, excellence, communication, originality, and self-assessment but really committed to them, no matter how uncomfortable that became—wasn’t a singular assignment. It was a day-in-day-out, full-time job. And one that I wanted to do."

Part 2 is titled Protecting the New. That’s a theme that will run through the book from here on. The chapters are: Honesty and Candor, Fear and Failure, The Hungry Beast and The Ugly Baby, Change and Randomness, and The Hidden.

“Because early on, all of our movies suck. That’s a blunt assessment, I know, but I make a point of repeating it often, and I choose that phrasing because saying it in a softer way fails to convey how bad the first versions of our films really are. I’m not trying to be modest or self-effacing by saying this. Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them so—to go, as I say, ‘from suck to not-suck.’ This idea—that all the movies we now think of as brilliant were, at one time, terrible—is a hard concept for many to grasp”

“So if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal.”

"One of the biggest barriers is fear, and while failure comes with the territory, fear shouldn’t have to. The goal, then, is to uncouple fear and failure—to create an environment in which making mistakes doesn’t strike terror into your employees’ hearts."

"If you don’t try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead."

Part 3 is titled Building and Sustaining. There are only two chapters: Broadening Our View and The Unmade Future.

"This third section of the book is devoted to some of the specific methods we have employed at Pixar to prevent our disparate views from hindering our collaboration. In each case, we are trying to force ourselves—individually and as a company—to challenge our preconceptions."

"Companies, like individuals, do not become exceptional by believing they are exceptional but by understanding the ways in which they aren’t exceptional. Postmortems are one route into that understanding.”

Part 4, titled Testing What We Know, also has just two chapters. They are A New Challenge and Notes Day.

"The future is not a destination—it is a direction."

One more thing. Steve Jobs played a critical role in Pixar’s success and Ed Catmull has included an afterword called The Steve Jobs We Knew. My friend, Bob Sutton, has said that Steve Jobs is something of a Rorschach test for people. You see what you think you see, and other people see the same thing and interpret it differently. My problem has always been that most of the views of Jobs freeze him in time and they don’t indicate any growth or maturity. No one as intelligent or introspective as Steve Jobs would have stayed the same for his entire life. What I loved about the afterword is that it not only gave a unique view of Jobs as both a business partner and a friend, but also talked about his growth during his life.

Bottom Line

Creativity Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in The Way of True Inspiration is a great book about creativity and about how to lead an organization. More importantly it is the very best book I’ve ever read about unleashing the initiative and creativity of people in an organization.

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CurrentWave
So what does Pixar have to do with my company? More than you think.
Reviewed in the United States on June 13, 2015
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Ed Catmull is the president of Pixar and Disney Animation and one of the founding members of Pixar. In “Creativity, Inc.” Catmull recounts his personal story and the creation of Pixar Animation, the many challenges that he has faced throughout his career, how he dealt with those challenges and the many lessons learned, and how to face the challenges ahead. He offers his own unique insights on creating, building, and maintaining a sustainable corporate culture and a true corporate identity that believes in, fosters, and supports creativity. With a conversational tone and common-sense, straightforward presentation, the author presents a great framework for anyone interested understanding and improving corporate culture, from the business student to the CEO. The way that Catmull presents his claims is thoughtful and genuine. He provides real-world cases and experiences to back up his assertions, never coming off as a clueless executive who’s just regurgitating the same familiar (and tired) business book tropes.

In chapters 1 through 4 Catmull tells his own journey, from a young child through the often turbulent creation of Pixar. After the creation of Pixar and the the success of Toy Story, he learned two central principles – “the story is king” and “trust the process.” The former idea was that focusing on and creating a good story would be paramount to the success of the project. The latter principle was reassurance that even if things got tough they could lean on the process that had been put in place and trust that following the it could get them over almost any hurdles.

The production of Toy Story 2, which was much more challenging, taught him that putting the right team in place is absolutely critical. The author refutes the opt-repeated idea that when building a team you should look for good ideas, not good people. As he points out, ideas come from people, so finding good people is key. Additionally, he states that it’s “…the focus on people – their work habits, their talents, their values – that is absolutely central to any creative venture.” He has since made it a priority to make sure that hired the right people and put them on projects that complement their skills, which will in turn lead to good ideas.

Chapters 5 through 9 are devoted to topics that challenge an organization:

- Candor. There subtle difference between honesty and candor. Honesty, he says, carries a moral connotation while candor does not. He believes that candor and the ability to feel open to share one’s thoughts and ideas and criticisms is essential to maintaining a creative working environment. It allows for the evaluation and re-evaluation of the project and the opportunity to make iterative improvements throughout the project life.

- Failure. While Pixar has been very fortunate to have had great successes they have also experienced their share of failures. Failure can be opportunity for growth and essential to learning. Iterative processes using trial and error, which frequently lead to failure, can help guide us to the best solution. Certainly, we should not seek out or become accepting of failure but it also should not be vilified to the point of creating a culture that avoids risk due to fear, stifling creativity and innovation.

- “Feeding the beast” and “the ugly baby.” Feeding the beast is what happens when a company enjoys some success, realizes significant growth, and then has to churn out more and more product to justify its own existence; you have to constantly feed the monster you’ve created. This often results in increased pressure to shorten development times which, in the author’s opinion, almost always leads to a corresponding loss in product quality. “The ugly baby” refers to an idea at conception that is very rough around the edges. They are incomplete and not fully formed. Ideas in this stage are vulnerable to being destroyed and need to be protected and nurtured to survive.

- Change. People fear of it and are resistance to it, often perceiving change as an admission that what thye’ve been doing isn’t really working. They don’t like the confusion, stress, or extra work that often accompanies change. However, change can be vital to growth and the creative process because it’s often necessary to evolve due to the changing conditions, business or otherwise, that surround you.

- Randomness. In business, and in life in general, we should not be fooled to think that we can control every aspect of every situation. However much we think that we are in control of our own destinies we need to recognize that the reality is that a fair amount of our success or failure, more than we often care to admit, is well beyond our control. He also uses this to underscore the idea that all the people in the company has an interest in its success so they should not be prevented or discouraged from making independent decisions because, in his words,”…we must meet unexpected problems with unexpected responses.”

- The Hidden. The hidden are the all the many things that we cannot see that influence our decisions; the unknown problems we have yet to encounter. Catmull states that one of his core management beliefs is “if you don’t try to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill-prepared to lead.”

Later in book the author discusses methods that they have employed at Pixar to prevent these challenges within the organization from impeding collaboration and creativity.

1. Dailies or solving problems together. Collaborative daily meetings with project stakeholders to review and discuss the status of production in order to receive and provide feedback and constructive criticism.
2. Research Trips. Teams are encouraged to perform real-world research by immersing themselves into subjects and visiting locations in person to promote creativity and authenticity, preventing the finished product from feeling forced or derivative.
3. The Power of Limits. Priorities and limits need to be set within the context of the tasks at hand and the overall project in order to remain focused and make efficient use of time and resources. Limits can also be beneficial in that they often lead to creative solutions to overcome them.
4. Integrating Technology and Art. Using all the latest tools and technologies at your disposal to challenge, improve, and spur innovation in the creative process.
5. Short Experiments. Experimentation often leads to innovation, learning, and the development of skills that can be utilized on larger projects. It also affords a greater creative freedom and the ability to take bigger risks than many larger projects.
6. Learning to See. Setting aside preconceptions and biases so as not to jump to conclusions in order see something clearly for what it really is, or is not.
7. Postmortems. An exploratory meeting at the conclusion of a project to discuss what worked, what didn’t, how things could have been done different, and other lessons learned. These are essential components of continuous improvement.
8. Continuing to Learn. Learning promotes creativity and new ways of thinking. It opens us up to new ideas and possibilities which help reinvigorate the creative process.

Ultimately, our author makes the case that it is possible to create a sustainable creative culture. There will be challenges, setbacks, and failures but with the right people and processes in place they can almost always be overcome. There is a great assumption of risk that is married to any creative venture, and Pixar certainly is no exception. While the ideas he has presented create a framework of barriers to creativity and actions Pixar took prevent them, we must remain watchful and vigilant, and the solutions must evolve when needed. When it works it can be a source of great pride and accomplishment. The path isn’t always easy but, as the author states in closing, “…ease isn’t the goal; excellence is.”

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Amazon Customer
A Must Read for Creative Management!
Reviewed in Canada on November 29, 2024
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This book is fantastic and full of well thought out concepts that would work for any industry but especially those in entertainment. I’ll be transferring my learnings to my game team for sure!

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Guilherme Marques
Fantástico!
Reviewed in Brazil on February 7, 2023
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Ainda lendo, mas o livro te leva pra uma aventura de criatividade! Ótima leitura e ensinamentos.

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Cliente de Amazon
Una de las mejores lecturas que he hecho
Reviewed in Mexico on December 4, 2019
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Excelente libro. A todo el que esté en un ambiente de gestión de equipos o que tenga que ver con temas de creatividad y generación de ideas se lo recomiendo mucho. Más que una historia sobre Pixar, es un recuento de experiencias para ejemplificar cómo generar un ambiente donde la gente se sienta cómoda y se propicie la creatividad para tener un desempeño más eficiente.
En cuanto a la calidad del libro, es de primerísima calidad y llegó en poco tiempo y buenas condiciones

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@Timothy_Hughes
The book with a three in one story line
Reviewed in the United Kingdom on September 15, 2020
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Creativity, INC. is the best management and leadership book I have read for a long time. Ed Catmull, probably because of his background in storytelling at Pixar, provides three books in one.

The first is a history of Pixar, which has become a cultural icon. He offers leadership advice based on case studies from Pixar and later in the Pixar and Disney Animation merger / take over. The third storyline is that of Steve Jobs. Steve purchased Pixar and worked with Ed for 25 years before his death. The three story lines are intertwined, which should keep the reader's attention.

The book isn’t all “mother and apple pie”, Ed points out where corporations go wrong and even admits his and Pixar’s own failings. But for any business you need to be looking for the good and the bad, if you are to have continued success.

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Sofia Goya
Must read for entrepreneurs
Reviewed in Spain on August 22, 2019
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I’m a huge fan of Pixar so I was looking forward to reading this book. I have to say it has been one of the best books I’ve read on creativity and leadership.

I’ve learned so much from Ed Catmull’s principles, he explains everything with an extraordinary detail.

Also, as a side note, I want to share that with this wonderful book I discovered another side to Steve Jobs. After reading Walter Isaacson’s biography of Steve Job I thought I knew all about him, but I was wrong... Ed Catmull has discovered a new Jobs for me.

I strongly encourage you to read this book if you’re interested in learning some great leadership principles and strategies to create an environment where creativity thrives.

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5.0 out of 5 stars The best book I've read on fostering creativity and innovation in a company -- must-read for managers

5.0 out of 5 stars So what does Pixar have to do with my company? More than you think.

Top reviews from other countries

5.0 out of 5 stars A Must Read for Creative Management!

5.0 out of 5 stars Fantástico!

5.0 out of 5 stars Una de las mejores lecturas que he hecho

5.0 out of 5 stars The book with a three in one story line

5.0 out of 5 stars Must read for entrepreneurs

The best book I've read on fostering creativity and innovation in a company -- must-read for managers

So what does Pixar have to do with my company? More than you think.

A Must Read for Creative Management!

Fantástico!

Una de las mejores lecturas que he hecho

The book with a three in one story line

Must read for entrepreneurs