Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar and president of Walt Disney, shares insights on constantly tweaking and reinventing the rules for creative effectiveness. He discusses Steve Jobs' changing approach and the impact of Apple on the world. Catmull also highlights the birth of Pixar, their partnership with Disney, the success of Toy Story, and the evolution of the brain trust. He emphasizes the importance of reassessing and retooling the creative process to remove bottlenecks and engages listeners with effective strategies.
Embracing constant tweaking and reinvention of creative processes leads to sustained innovation.
Creating a collaborative environment and encouraging ownership fosters a supportive culture where creativity can flourish.
Deep dives
The Power of Reinventing Creative Processes
Ed Catmull and his team at Pixar developed a dynamic and sustainable creative culture by embracing the constant tweaking, hacking, and reinvention of their creative processes. This allowed them to adapt to new challenges and keep their creative edge.
Building a Collaborative Environment
Ed Catmull emphasized the importance of creating a collaborative environment where everyone feels ownership and is encouraged to contribute their ideas. This led to a supportive culture where problems were tackled collectively and creativity flourished.
The Role of Feedback and Iteration
Pixar's Braintrust, a group of trusted individuals, provided candid feedback and objective criticism to directors and their teams during film production. This iterative approach allowed for constant refinement and improvement of their creative work.
Scaling Creativity and Overcoming Challenges
As Pixar grew and faced new challenges, Ed Catmull identified bottlenecks and implemented strategies to maintain creativity and nimbleness. This included preserving a separate entity for Pixar within the Disney organization and fostering a healthy ecosystem of idea sharing among various studios.
There's no perfect process for achieving your goals. Accepting that the rules you play by need to be constantly tweaked, hacked or reinvented will open you up to new ways of innovating. Instilling this attitude throughout your organization will help you be boldly differential in your experimentation.
Ed Catmull literally wrote the book on creating a dynamic and sustainable creative culture. Drawing on his experience as co-founder of celebrated animation studio Pixar, and president of Walt Disney Animation Studios, Ed shares his hard-won insights from his career as a pioneering technologist, animator and storyteller.