The key ideas

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

Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace, 2014

Pixar films look like effortless magic, but the man who built the studio says it plainly: almost every one of them was bad at first. Ed Catmull shows how to turn a studio into a place where a weak start becomes a strong finish, time after time. This book is not about animation. It is about teams, honesty and the fear that quietly kills everything new. You will learn how to protect raw ideas, hear the truth and learn from mistakes without hunting for someone to blame.

Who it is for

For anyone who leads people: managers, founders and those putting together their very first team. And for anyone curious how a place works where new things are born again and again.

Failure isn't a necessary evil. In fact, it isn't evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new.

What this book is about

Pixar films look as if they were born beautiful and effortless. Ed Catmull, one of the studio's founders, says the opposite: almost every one of their films was bad in its early versions. The magic is not that someone once had a brilliant idea. The magic is that the studio learned to turn a weak start into a strong finish, and to do it again and again.

Ed Catmull is a scientist who helped launch computer animation, and for many years he was president of Pixar and of Disney's animation studio. Pixar itself grew out of a small team working for George Lucas: the computer division of his company, Lucasfilm. In the 1980s Steve Jobs bought that division. Together with the journalist Amy Wallace, Catmull wrote a book about how a creative team works when it does not run out of steam after its first hit.

Ahead: why a strong team matters more than a brilliant idea, why you need an honest review with no bosses in charge, how to protect a raw thought from an early verdict, and what keeps us from seeing our own mistakes. This is not a book about animation. It is a book about not letting fear and habit kill something alive.

Idea 1. A strong team matters more than a brilliant idea

We like to believe the idea is everything: find a stroke of genius and success is in the bag. Catmull watched dozens of projects and came to the opposite conclusion. What matters most is not the idea but the people working on it.

His rule goes like this: give a good idea to a mediocre team and they will ruin it. Give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better. At the start an idea is almost always raw, and it is people who pull it through. At one point Toy Story 2 was in such bad shape that the team rebuilt the film almost from scratch. What saved it was the people, not a new idea.

The mistake a leader makes is to fall in love with the idea, guard it, and treat people as the ones who just carry it out. Catmull bets on the team first: on how people argue, trust each other and fix what is broken. Team first, idea second. How to use it: when a project is stuck, do not rush to look for a new brilliant idea. Ask whether the team is healthy and whether people are honest with each other.

Picture two departments. One has a brilliant plan and people who cannot stand each other. The other has an average plan, but the people trust each other and tell the truth. Six months later the second one will be ahead: an average plan can be improved, but broken relationships almost never can.

An idea is only a starting point. What makes it work is not a lone author but a team that knows how to argue honestly and help each other.

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About the author

Ed Catmull is a scientist who stood at the very beginning of computer animation and served for many years as president of Pixar and of Walt Disney Animation Studios. Amy Wallace is an American journalist and the book's co-author.

All books by this author: Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace

Terms from the book

  • Jobs
  • Lucas
  • Pixar
  • Lasseter
  • Braintrust
  • Computer animation: Making moving images with a computer instead of hand drawings. Pixar was the first studio to make an entire feature film this way.
  • Disney: The Walt Disney Company, the largest media company and the oldest animation studio. It bought Pixar in 2006, and Catmull went on to lead both animation studios.
  • Lucasfilm: George Lucas's film company. Pixar began as its computer division until Steve Jobs bought it in 1986.
  • Toy Story: Toy Story (1995), the first feature film made entirely on a computer. It was released by Pixar.
  • Candor: In the book, the core value of a team: the willingness to say what you really think, even when it is uncomfortable. Catmull sets it apart from mere politeness.
  • Notes Day: A day in March 2013 when Pixar stopped its normal work so that every employee could talk openly about what the studio could do better.
  • Ugly Baby: Catmull's image, not a scientific term. His name for a new idea that is still raw and defenseless and can easily be killed by early criticism.
  • Hungry Beast: Catmull's image, not a scientific term. His name for the studio's production machine, with its deadlines and budgets, which always demands finished work.
  • Postmortem: A review of a finished project, where the team talks over what worked and what did not. For Catmull, the main rule of such a review is not to look for someone to blame.
  • the Hidden: An image from the book. The unseen forces and circumstances that shape our work but that we usually fail to notice, especially after a success.

All terms

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