In 1995, Pixar successfully released Toy Story, the first full length feature film created solely with computer animation. Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, had accomplished his life-long mission of doing just that and now felt lost. What do you do next when you’ve accomplished something you’ve been working towards for more than 20 years? He realized that he and the team had developed something new and innovative, so he shifted his focus to how other ‘Titans of New’ often failed to survive after early success. His new mission was not only to build a successful company, but one with a sustained culture of creativity. Creativity, Inc. is the story of how he did it.

Part I: Getting Started

Part I focuses on the early stages of Catmull’s professional life, through starting as a graduate student at the University of Utah, to being hired by LucasFilms to head their computer division, to eventually being sold to Steve Jobs. At the U of U Catmull was introduced to; 1) a number of people that would play a role in Pixar’s success (both directly and via future corporate partnerships) and 2) an organization that empowered smart people to innovate for innovation’s sake – something which Catmull would find difficult to balance in a for-profit organization. One key takeaway he had from his time in post-graduate academia was the faculty needed to know when to provide feedback and when to stand back so as to not stifle the students’ creativity. This was a cultural attribute he would try to reproduce at Pixar.

After Toy Story and A Bug’s Life had been released, Catmull started asking bigger questions:

• “If we had done some things right to achieve success, how could we ensure that we understood what those things were?”
• “Could we replicate those in our next projects? Is Replication even the right thing to do?”
• “How many serious, potential disasters were lurking out of sight and threatening to undo us? What, if anything, could we do to bring them to light?”
• “How much of our success was luck?”

It was clear that the next goal for Catmull would be to “figure out how to build a sustainable creative culture.” It wouldn’t be a “singular assignment. It was a day-in-day-out, full-time job.” Chapter 4: Establishing Pixar’s Identity starts this off by describing the successes and failures uncovered during the production of Toy Story 2, when Pixar needed to replace the director of the film halfway through its development, citing, “it was the first time we gave a position to someone believing they could do it, only to find that they couldn’t.” The new leaders decided to completely revamp the film with only 1 year until it was due to hit theaters, during which Catmull and his fellow Pixar leaders discovered the following:

• “What’s more important, people or ideas?” Answer: People. They create ideas.
• Mediocre/great teams/ideas – “Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team and they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”
• If you find, develop, and support good people, they will find, develop, and own good ideas.
• Goals vs THE GOAL – “Efficiency was a goal, but quality is THE GOAL”
• Asking too much of our people is not acceptable, even if they are willing to give it. “It is a leader’s responsibility to see this, and guide it, not exploit it.”
• Pixar had a mantra: “Story is King.” Having a mantra isn’t special, but believing it and acting accordingly is. Having a mantra doesn’t prevent things from going wrong, but it does give you a north star to guide you through it.

Part II: Protecting the New

Candor and Feedback

Catmull attributes much of Pixar’s success to how their culture values candor: “A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms.” Protecting the ability for people to feel comfortable when speaking up is a job that never ends for those in leadership positions: “Lack of candor, if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments.”

Being wrong is not the problem; the problem is not knowing you’re wrong or not knowing how to correct it. A culture of candor solves both of those problems. However, candor is only valuable if the receiver is willing to take that feedback and be open rather than defensive; Pixar created a forum for candor and feedback called The Braintrust. The key in these sessions is to look at feedback as additive rather than competitive, with each participant contributing something to the conversation. There are dozens of stories in Creativity, Inc. of how The Braintrust helped a team through a problem. While they do not always provide an answer, they will at least identify if something is wrong or incomplete: “Any successful feedback system is built on empathy, with the idea that we are all in this together.” Catmull urges us to create our own solution group, like Pixar’s Braintrust. The individuals should, combined, make you smarter and offer quick feedback. It’s not about providing THE ANSWER; its about brainstorming and helping us get past our own roadblocks.

Fear, Failure, and Teaching

Whenever you’re doing something new, mistakes are inevitable. If we’re fortunate, we find, correct, and use our mistakes as learning experiences before the public knows about them. Fear can often drive us to overprepare in an attempt to prevent mistakes, but Catmull warns us:

• “trying to avoid failure by outthinking it – dooms you to fail.”
• “Over-planners just take longer to be wrong… you cannot plan your way out of problems.”
• “Being open about problems is the first step toward learning from them.”
• A failed approach is usually one step closer to finding the best option.

When exploration and experimentation are viewed as productive necessities rather than a waste of time, people will enjoy their work: “Experimentation is scary to many… we should be far more terrified of the opposite approach.” We must uncouple fear from failure: “The antidote to fear is trust.” If we are patient, authentic, and consistent, trust will come and our teams will be more comfortable with failing an experiment and learning from it.

“As leaders, we should think of ourselves as teachers and try to create companies in which teaching is seen as a valued way to contribute to the success of the whole.” We cannot assume that the next person will become successful just because others have figured it out. We tell ourselves that we will spend more time investing in our teams, but that time is often eaten by the demands of the day-to-day. We MUST make time for teaching so that our team is enabled and empowered to fix their problems: “Management’s job is not to prevent risk but to build the ability to recover.”

The Hungry Beast and the Ugly Baby

Catmull describes what success can do to a company; success drives the demand for MORE SUCCESS. It adds the pressure to create and to do it quickly, but if left unchecked it will lessen the quality. That is the nature of the ‘Beast’ and its never-ending hunger: “The Beast’s hunger translates into deadlines and urgency. That’s a good thing, as long as the Best is kept in its place. And that’s the tough part.”

On the opposite side is our creativity: “Originality is fragile.” Ideas in their early stage are ugly, poorly defined, and difficult to explain. Ideas may not even appear to be anything that can eventually evolve into something successful; they are a baby that must be coddled: “For greatness to merge, there must be phases of not-so-greatness.”

This is what must be balanced in a business driven by creativity. If either the Hungry Beast or the Ugly Baby win, the company loses. Catmull admits that he, “could never fully explain how to achieve this balance. That you only learn by doing.” His advice though? “Managers of creative enterprises must hold lightly to goals and firmly to intentions.”

Change, Randomness, and the Hidden

We can’t avoid change, no matter how hard we try - nor should we want to! “There is no growth or success without change.” But, without fail, as we experience success we hang on to those things that brought success, not truly knowing which parts are worth keeping and which are worth discarding.

Randomness is deeply embedded in everything we do and contributes to both our successes and our failures. Worse yet, our brains aren’t wired for us to contemplate it. We are a pattern driven species, so much so that we see patterns that don’t even exist. If we fail to recognize those false patterns of randomness, we fail to identify which strategies of success to hold on to and we won’t learn from our failures.

As your role changes within a company (e.g. promotions, influence, etc.), people will become more guarded around you. You may no longer see gradual changes in behavior; always be cognizant that you don’t see much of your team’s one-on-one interactions. The knowledge that some problems will always be hidden will make you a better manager. Go find them, ask thought-provoking questions, and extract that information from your teams. Don’t be afraid of appearing to not be in control; complex environments are complex and you cannot know everything. Focus on the techniques to combine stories from different sources, find their interrelationships, and hunt down those problems that are outside your view. Only by acknowledging your blind spots can you really accomplish that.

Part III: Building and Sustaining

Broadening Our View

Catmull describes four very high-level factors (obstacles?) that impact how we manage:

1. We use our previous experiences to build mental models and shortcuts.
2. It can then be difficult to identify when our existing models won’t work with the new information.
3. Because of that, we lose the ability to be flexible.
4. We often have separate models when we are in situations with a specific set of people, like our co-workers or families, where we respond very differently if we are with those individuals.

He then goes on to describe several mechanisms that can help change our frame of mind and overcome those obstacles:

1. Daily Huddles, focused on team problem solving – More communication, coming from multiple sources of information, is always better.
2. Research Trips – “Ultimately what we’re after is authenticity… In my experience, when people go out on research trips, they always come back changed… They fuel inspiration.”
3. The Power of Limits – “The very concept of a limit implies that you can’t do everything you want – so we must think of smarter ways to work.” Limits keep us balanced and “force us to rethink how we are working and push us to new heights of creativity.”
4. Integrating Technology and User Experience – Role rotations or “a day in the life” programs can be vital to the technology teams in understanding the business user’s needs, as well as for the users to understand all of the back-office complexities of solving for those needs. It not only helps to make the team nimble, but it helps to prevent frustrations when those integrations are difficult.
5. Short Experiments – “Better to have train wrecks with miniature trains than real ones.” Test new technologies or user experiences outside of your main product before impacting your main users or customers.
6. Learning to See – “Focusing on something can make it more difficult to see.” Learning to set aside your preconceptions and ignoring your previously established biases will help you see what you have been missing.
7. Post-mortems – “Companies do not become exceptional by believing they are exceptional but by understanding the ways in which they aren’t exceptional.” a. Five reasons to do post-mortems: i. Consolidate what’s been learned. ii. Teach others who were not involved. iii. Clear up previous misunderstandings. iv. Preparation (and self-reflection) for the postmortem meeting is perhaps even more valuable than the meeting itself. v. Start the next project with the right questions. b. Techniques to get the most out of postmortems: i. Vary the format or change the scope. If you use the same format, you’ll likely get the same answers. ii. Be aware that people will be scared to be directly critical. Find ways to ask questions that soften the blow. iii. Make use of the DATA, not just the verbatims: “Measure what you can, evaluate what you measure, and appreciate that you cannot measure the vast majority of what you do.”
8. Continuing to Learn – Don’t let the fear of judgement hinder creativity. Instead, try things you’ve never tried before and encourage your teams to do the same.

The Unmade Future

Rather than having the confidence to know exactly where you’re going, instead have confidence that we can figure it out together.

Other people are our best allies for overcoming our obstacles, “but that alliance takes sustained effort to build. You should be prepared for that, not irritated by it.”

People often repeat what has worked in the past. It’s important to use our skills, knowledge, and experiences to invent rather than duplicate. Duplication is neither original nor creative.

Leaders need to adapt to their current situation. Sometimes they need to be decisive, sometimes they need to get out of the way: “Sometimes I run the room, and sometimes I say nothing and let the room run itself.”

“The future is unmade, and we must create it.”

Part IV: Testing What We Know

The last section in the book covers two monumental events at Pixar. The first is the sale of Pixar to Disney, in which Ed Catmull would become president of Disney Animation and Pixar studios, overseeing both organizations. Pixar was worried about losing their culture, something they have worked so hard to build. Disney Animation had lost their engine which drove creativity, but that didn’t mean that Disney Animation didn’t have anything to teach Pixar; Disney had tremendous marketing and distribution knowledge. It was clear that both teams could learn from and needed each other.

The other pivotal event Catmull describes is ‘Notes Day,’ a day where Pixar executives rallied all employees to help solve Pixar’s foreseen sustainability problem. Costs and human hours were increasing year over year at a faster pace than anticipated outputs (movies) and revenues. The day was an attempt to demolish the roadblocks that were getting in the way of candor. It did not only that, but it was a tremendous motivator for the entire organization, involving people in what interested them. Notes Day worked because; 1) it had a clear and focused goal, 2) it was an idea championed and supported at the highest levels of the company, and 3) it was led from within, where employees took on the enormously time-consuming task of identifying the topics, structuring the conversations, and creating an environment where the entire staff could contribute - even if it was outside of their swim lane.

Afterword and Starting Points

In the Afterword, Catmull tells the story of a different Steve Jobs to the one we hear about in the media, movies, and even in the Steve Jobs endorsed biography. Jobs played an integral role in the survival of Pixar during its early days, as well as its success throughout its lifetime right up until his death. Jobs was involved from buying the division from LucasFilms, to losing millions of dollars in the early years (when Pixar started as a computer hardware company, pivoting to create original content with the hardware and software they had developed), to the eventual sale of Pixar to Disney. Each pivot and transition that Pixar went through, Jobs was there. He not only helped form and execute key strategies, but he also served as a mentor, guiding Ed and John through those transition periods. The Afterword was a fitting tribute to Steve’s role in the company, telling the story of how Steve evolved over the course of his life (something we often do not hear of Steve), ending Creativity, Inc. on an emotional note that made me tear up. I highly recommend this to anyone who enjoys reading about one of the great innovators of our time.

Conclusion/Review

At Pixar, Catmull’s focus was always to make sure to tell the best story they could - that carries over to Creativity, Inc. It’s an overall easy read with many humorous anecdotal stories, used to describe behaviors, techniques, and thought processes that helped Pixar stay true to their guiding principles. To top it all off, perhaps the most enjoyable part of Creativity, Inc. was learning about the behind-the-scenes activities that go into making some of our favorite movies and hearing of the struggles that Pixar faced while doing so.

Quotes and Other Key Takeaways

• Nature of Management: Decisions are made and usually for good reasons. They do not happen in a vacuum though and they lead to other decisions, causing a web of dependencies. When problems arise (which they always do), finding the root of the problem is not usually easy.
• “To succeed, I needed to attract the sharpest minds. To attract the sharpest minds, I needed to put my own insecurities away…Ever since, I’ve tried to hire people who are smarter than I am.”
• “When faced with a challenge, get smarter”
• “I learned that fear was groundless. Over the years, I have met people who took what seemed the safer path and were less for it.”
• “For all the care you put into artistry, visual polish frequently doesn’t matter if you are getting the story right.”
• We can often see ego in others that we cannot see in ourselves.
• Sometimes the most valuable lessons to be learned from advice can be found in the flaws of that same advice.
• Don’t let simple answers to complex problems prevent you from asking more fundamental questions; this will help to develop your own understanding of the complexities.
• “You don’t have to ask permission to take responsibility.”
• Oftentimes, the good will hide the bad. SEARCHING for problems is not the same as SEEING problems.
• Don’t confuse communication structure with organizational structure. Anyone should be able to talk to anyone at any time.
• Asking too much of our people is not acceptable, even if they are willing to give it.
• “To ensure quality, then, excellence must be an earned word, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves. It is the responsibility of good leaders to make sure that words remain attached to the meanings and ideals they represent.”
• “Early on, all movies suck…Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them go from suck to not-suck.”
• Find out that you’re wrong as fast as you can.
• “You don’t want to be at a company where there is more candor in the hallways than in the rooms where fundamental ideas or matters of policy are being hashed out.”
• “If your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal.”
• “The more time you spend mapping out an approach, the more likely you are to get attached to it.”
• Some industries require us to be failure-free (think NASA), but that should not be the goal in every industry.
• If a leader stands up and admits to having a problem but not yet knowing how to solve it, their team will usually follow them to the ends of the earth to help.
• Hindsight is not 20-20. We think we know what happened and, because of that, we aren’t open to finding more information.
• “The best way to predict the future is to invent it.”
• Quality isn’t just in our product, it’s in our culture; it’s how we treat and recognize our employees. Remember, “easy isn’t the goal. Quality is the goal.”
• “PERSIST. PERSIST on telling your story. PERSIST on reaching your audience. PERSIST on staying true to your vision.”