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

by Lawrence Levy

Creative excellence is a dance on the precipice of failure, a battle against the allure of safety. There are no shortcuts, no formulas, no well-worn paths to victory. It tests you constantly.

The natural tendency in negotiations is to engage in positional bargaining. This means taking a position knowing that it is not a final position, and holding in reserve a backup position. The danger of positional bargaining is that it forces you to think about backup positions, which weakens your conviction in your original position. It’s like negotiating against yourself. Plan A may be your optimal outcome, but inwardly you have already convinced yourself to settle on Plan B.