Download Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

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

Author: | Language: English | ISBN: B00IPJTQQW | Format: EPUB

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration Description

From Ed Catmull, co-founder (with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter) of Pixar Animation Studios, comes an incisive book about creativity in business - sure to appeal to readers of Daniel Pink, Tom Peters, and Chip and Dan Heath.

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."

For nearly 20 years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner 30 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 PhD 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 founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. The essential ingredient in that movie?s success - and in the 13 movies that followed - was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protec...

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Audible Audio Edition
Listening Length: 12 hours and 52 minutes
Program Type: Audiobook
Version: Unabridged
Publisher: Random House Audio
Scheduled Audible.com Release Date: April 8, 2014
Language: English
ASIN: B00IPJTQQW

I enjoyed this book despite the fact that I am not part of its target audience. I'm not a manager. Instead I'm just a Disney history buff with a library of over a hundred books devoted to every aspect of the Company, including Pixar. I was excited by the prospect of behind-the-scenes stories from Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull. And with that in mind, I was not really disappointed.

True, at the outset, Dr. Catmull insists that this is not a memoir but rather an exploration of Pixar's creative culture with tips for managers on topics like team building, the benefits of failure, effective organization, and communication. Yet in order to access each of these (and other) talking points, Catmull pulls from his direct experiences at Pixar, and Disney and/or Pixar enthusiasts will delight in some of the anecdotal stories that are shared, from an insider perspective on the early history of Pixar to how "Toy Story 2" nearly got deleted during its production.

While none of the Pixar films are discussed at length from start to finish, with the possible exception of "Toy Story 2," we get a wide variety of random stories, all tied in to the larger discussion of forging a non-toxic, creative atmosphere which helps to invest employees in their work and ultimately create a better product. A behind-the-scenes story from the making of "Brave" illustrates one of Dr. Catmull's points while, two pages later, we get an anecdote from the production of "Wall-E," followed by a few nifty tidbits about an unproduced film or short that did not work out. And to be clear, I did not skip around looking solely for the Pixar stories. Despite not being a manager myself, I was interested in Dr. Catmull's philosophy.

In this book written with Amy Wallace, Ed Catmull reviews his brilliant career to date, meanwhile sharing his thoughts and feelings about a wealth of experiences from which he learned valuable lessons that he generously shares with his reader. He is most closely identified with Pixar. Why is it a unique human community?

"What makes Pixar special is that we acknowledge we will always have problems, many of them hidden from our view; that we work hard to uncover these 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. This, more than any other costume or turreted workstation, is why I love coming to work in the morning. It is what motivates me and gives me a definite sense of mission."

Early on in his relationship with Pixar, Catmull set about to make one of his dreams come true: "It has always been my goal to create a culture at Pixar that will outlast its founding leaders -- Steve Jobs, John Lasseter, and me. But it is also my goal to share our underlying philosophies with other leaders and, frankly, with anyone who wrestles with the competing -- but necessarily complementary -- forces of art and commerce."

Why specifically did Catmull write this book? "The thesis of this book is that there are many blocks to creativity, but there are active steps we can take to protect the creative process. In the coming pages, I will discuss many of the steps we follow at Pixar, but the most compelling mechanisms to me are those that deal with uncertainty, instability, lack of candor, and the things we cannot see.

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