To Pixar and Beyond: My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs to Make Entertainment History

by Lawrence Levy

“There’s nothing you can do about where

the pieces are,” he’d say. “It’s only your next move that matters.”

The flames of creativity on which a company is built can easily cool as pressures to perform mount.

But somewhere in the process I had let myself believe they would

want to go forward. That made the rejection sting all the more.

Steve once told me that the gestation of great products takes much longer than it appears. What seems to emerge from nowhere belies a long process of development, trials, and missteps.

The problem with success, even a little success, is that it changes you. You are no longer walking along the same precipice that drove you to do great work in the first place. Now you have something to defend: a reputation, money in the bank, a brand, real customer expectations. Success

But I felt really proud of our decision. We had chosen to truly empower talent, to send a signal to Pixar’s creative leaders that we trusted them.

Fear and ego conspire to rein in creativity, and it is easy to allow creative inspiration to take a back seat to safety. It is one thing to cite the adage “Story is king.” It is another thing entirely to live by it.

Leverage is an assessment of bargaining strength; negotiation is how you put that bargaining strength to work for you. A

mind cannot comprehend the full complexity of reality.

To Rinpoche there is a world of difference between insatiable craving and joyful indulgence.