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

by Ed Catmull

we had put our faith in a simple idea: If we made something that we wanted to see, others would want to see it, too.

it wasn’t just the numbers that made us proud; money, after all, is just one measure of a thriving company and usually not the most meaningful one. No, what I found gratifying was what we’d created.

Everything was going our way, and yet I felt adrift. In fulfilling a goal, I had lost some essential framework. Is this really what I want to do?

I couldn’t deny that achieving the goal that had defined my professional life had left me without one. Is this all there is? I wondered. Is it time for a new challenge?

I’d spent two decades building a train and laying its track. Now, the thought of merely driving it struck me as a far less interesting task. Was making one film after another enough to engage me? I wondered. What would be my organizing principle now?

It would take a full year for the answer to emerge.

leaders of these companies seemed so focused on the competition that they never developed any deep introspection about other destructive forces that were at work.

My desire to protect Pixar from the forces that ruin so many businesses gave me renewed focus.

I would devote myself to learning how to build not just a successful company but a sustainable creative culture.

When it comes to creative inspiration, job titles and hierarchy are meaningless.

The closer you were seated to the middle of the table, it implied, the more important—the more central—you must be. And the farther away, the less likely you were to speak up—your distance from the heart of the conversation made participating feel intrusive.

Why were we blind to this? Because the seating arrangements and place cards were designed for the convenience of the leaders, including me.

we saw nothing amiss because we didn’t feel excluded.

Those not sitting at the center of the table, meanwhile, saw quite clearly how it established a pecking order but presumed that we—the leaders—had intended tha...

if viewers sense not just movement but intention—or, put another way, emotion—then the animator has done his or her job.

Something about the act of committing that object to paper was completely engrossing—the way it necessitated seeing only what was there and shutting out the distraction of my ideas about chairs or vases and what they were supposed to look like.

my decision to pursue physics, and not art, would lead me, indirectly, to my true calling.

ensure that it succeeded, I needed to attract the sharpest minds; to attract the sharpest minds, I needed to put my own insecurities away.

Over the years, I have met people who took what seemed the safer path and were the lesser for it.

giving a ton of freedom to highly self-motivated people enabled us to make some significant technological leaps in a short time.

they hadn’t even noticed that the movie had switched from full color to black and white wireframes! They were so caught up in the emotion of the story that they hadn’t noticed its flaws.

For all the care you put into artistry, visual polish frequently doesn’t matter if you are getting the story right.

People talking directly to one another, then letting the manager find out later, was more efficient than trying to make sure that everything happened in the “right” order and through the “proper” channels.

If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.

Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right.

It is easy to say you want talented people, and you do, but the way those people interact with ...

Getting the right people and the right chemistry is more important than getting the right idea.

it is the focus on people—their work habits, their talents, their values—that is absolutely central to any creative venture.

Toy Story 2 was a case study in how something that is usually considered a plus—a motivated, workaholic workforce pulling together to make a deadline—could destroy itself if left unchecked.

excellence must be an earned word, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves.

quality is not a consequence of following some set of behaviors. Rather, it is a prerequisite and a mindset you must have before you decide what you are setting out to do.

Lack of candor, if unchecked, ultimately leads to dysfunctional environments.

People who take on complicated creative projects become lost at some point in the process.

All directors, no matter how talented, organized, or clear of vision, become lost somewhere along the way.

How do you get a director to address a problem he or she cannot see?

the process of coming to clarity takes patience and candor.

the Braintrust has no authority.

The director does not have to follow any of the specific suggestions given. After a Braintrust meeting, it is up to

The film itself—not the filmmaker—is under the microscope. This principle eludes most people, but it is critical: You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged.

To set up a healthy feedback system, you must remove power dynamics from the equation—you must enable yourself, in other words, to focus on the problem, not the person.

to make a great film, its makers must pivot, at some point, from creating the story for themselves to creating it for others.

Frank talk, spirited debate, laughter, and love. If I could distill a Braintrust meeting down to its most essential ingredients, those four things would surely be among them.

If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it. And, for leaders especially, this strategy—trying to avoid failure by out-thinking it—dooms you to fail.

In a fear-based, failure-averse culture, people will consciously or unconsciously avoid risk.

Their work will be derivative, not innovative.

If we as leaders can talk about our mistakes and our part in them, then we make it safe for others.

Being open about problems is the first step toward learning from them.

I should caution that if you seek to plot out all your moves before you make them—if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line—well, you’re deluding yourself.

if your primary goal is to have a fully worked out, set-in-stone plan, you are only upping your chances of being unoriginal.

people who pour their energy into thinking about an approach and insisting that it is too early to act are wrong just as often as people who dive in and work quickly.