When most people tell stories about their successful creative endeavors, those stories often go like this: The project started out as a complete disaster, but then at the last moment, somehow we managed to rescue it. This arc is attractive because it dramatizes the improbability of the rescue and thus places the teller in a flattering light. But Catmull is doing something profoundly different. He sees the disaster and the rescue not as improbable companions but as causally related. The fact that these projects start out as painful, frustrating disasters is not an accident but a necessity. This
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