Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
Hardcover, 368 pages
English language
Published July 28, 2014 by Random House.
Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, 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 how to build a creative culture—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.” www.randomhouse.com/book/216369/creativity-inc-by-ed-catmull-and-amy-wallace
Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, 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 how to build a creative culture—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.” www.randomhouse.com/book/216369/creativity-inc-by-ed-catmull-and-amy-wallace
Loved this. I had heard the Pixar story previously as the story of John Laseter, but knew little of Ed Catmul, who was a tech guy who turned into the steward of a creative empire. Lots of interesting tidbits from his interactions with Steve Jobs and the early days of the PC industry. Also, some great tips on what does and does not make for a successful creative endeavour.
When I saw Creativity, Inc. on the bookshelf, I thought it was just another business book on creativity — in other words, dumb. But this book is by Ed Catmull on how Pixar is run. I mean, this is the guy who invented texture mapping. And that early part of the book recounting the early days of his career and the hardware computer graphics business that preceded Pixar is pretty interesting, but the meat of the book is how Pixar keeps its groove on (and quite interestingly, how Pixar imparted that groove to Disney after the merger).
There’s plenty of stuff about processes and storytelling and processes about processes and storytelling, and Steve Jobs, but there’s one lesson in there that I’ve been telling people: check your backups. Pixar almost lost an entire movie due to two classic errors: rm -f and assuming that the backup process was working. They …
When I saw Creativity, Inc. on the bookshelf, I thought it was just another business book on creativity — in other words, dumb. But this book is by Ed Catmull on how Pixar is run. I mean, this is the guy who invented texture mapping. And that early part of the book recounting the early days of his career and the hardware computer graphics business that preceded Pixar is pretty interesting, but the meat of the book is how Pixar keeps its groove on (and quite interestingly, how Pixar imparted that groove to Disney after the merger).
There’s plenty of stuff about processes and storytelling and processes about processes and storytelling, and Steve Jobs, but there’s one lesson in there that I’ve been telling people: check your backups. Pixar almost lost an entire movie due to two classic errors: rm -f and assuming that the backup process was working. They really lucked out due to an employee working at home who had copied everything.
I’m surprised people this smart would have fallen into this trap of bad risk management, but I’ve seen it happen at two of my workplaces. One was a small game studio that was backing up the wrong drives and the backups weren’t working, anyway. The other was software related to a space telescope (I won’t say which one, except that it rhymes with bubble). These are just two backup failures that I’ve been around — I’ve heard of others. So, don’t pull a Pixar — check your backups!
Musings on how to focus an organization on creativity rather than the typical fears and games of most businesses. How to sustain a creative culture as an organization grows. Lots of humility from the head of Pixar, and also a perspective on Steve Jobs that's useful, rather than worshipful or derisive.
