Edwin Catmull
A hallmark of a healthy creative culture is that its people feel free to share ideas, opinions, and criticisms. Our decision-making is better when we draw on the collective knowledge and unvarnished opinions of the group.Collection: Knowledge
We need business leaders who have a respect for technical issues even if they don't have technical backgrounds. In a lot of U.S. industries, including cars and even computers, many managers don't think of technology as a core competency, and this attitude leads them to farm out technical issues.Collection: Computers
We have to evolve, we have to change, and in order to do that, we have to initiate the change.Collection: Change
Communication needs to be between anybody at any time, which means it needs to happen out of the structure and out of order.Collection: Communication
When I see a film, I'll remember that there was a time when it wasn't working, and there was some pain and angst in order to get it to work.
I can't look at 'WALL-E' or 'Finding Nemo' or 'Up' and look at in the same way as people outside of the company would look at it. Each one of them had angst.
The need to challenge the status quo is just more obvious when you're failing than when you're succeeding. But it's no less urgent.
The skill of a good creative leader is being comfortable with blowing up an idea and knowing it will get better.
Creative ideas aren't like Jenga blocks, where they fall apart and you've got to start from scratch, though it can feel that way.
We need to remember we're always a lot more wrong than we think.
One of Pixar's key mechanisms is the Braintrust, which we rely on to push us toward excellence and to root out mediocrity. It is our primary delivery system for straight talk.
The Braintrust developed organically out of the rare working relationship among the five men who led and edited the production of 'Toy Story' - John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Lee Unkrich, and Joe Ranft.
I've really thought a lot about why other companies fail or succeed. I had to be a student of failure and find out why things went off the rails. I did that at a fairly deep level, and it's still something I do.
The desire to avoid meltdowns actually is one of the things that screws up live-action films.
It doesn't even matter how successful a movie like 'Up' is: you'll never sell a lot of toy walkers. But that's the way we spread out the risk.
In life,you're going to have risk, so you have to say, 'My attitude going forward is how to I fix the problem.' And it's not trying to cling onto the past. When I look around, most problems happen because people are trying to cling onto the past.
My best advice came by examples. A supportive environment at home, school, and grad school. Support at the New York Institute of Technology, then George Lucas, Steve Jobs, and Bob Iger. The examples meant that I should support other people, even when things aren't going well. It will pay off.
If you think you're right 80% of the time, you're deluded.
I've always been surprised at the number of people who think we've got it all figured out. It's incorrect, and it's a real problem.
I use a progressive alarm that makes a soft sound at first and then progressively gets louder. But I usually wake on the first sound, so it doesn't disturb my wife. When I used a loud alarm clock, I was more likely to hit it on the head and go back to sleep.
I eagerly await the day when there is a replacement for the meniscus.
Every Pixar movie has its own rules that viewers have to accept, understand, and enjoy understanding. The voices of the toys in the 'Toy Story' films, for example, are never audible to humans.
While problems in a film are fairly easy to identify, the sources of those problems are often extraordinarily difficult to assess. A mystifying plot twist or a less-than-credible change of heart in our main character is often caused by subtle underlying issues elsewhere in the story.
Beware of being blinded by your own success.
One of the effects Pixar University has on the culture is that it makes people less self-conscious about their work and gets them comfortable with being publicly reviewed.
I've certainly seen R&D groups, typically funded by large corporations, where they bring together a lot of smart people and nothing happens. And the reason nothing happens is that they don't have a clear goal.
If you want people to be let loose, you can't over-control them.
Throughout Pixar's history, we've had major meltdowns and crises. It's happened throughout our history: you reach a certain point, it doesn't work, and you start all over again.
When you take a director off a project, that makes a person feel humiliated because everyone knows it. But we're responsible because we put them in that position.
What I've learned running Pixar applies to all businesses.
For me, the work we did to turn around 'Toy Story 2' was the defining moment in Pixar's history.
We've always had ups and downs at Pixar, starting with the high we felt doing something we'd never done - 'Toy Story' - and the low we felt right after when we realized we'd messed a bunch of things up along the way.
People say they want to be in risky environments and do all kinds of exciting stuff. But they don't actually know what risk means: that risk actually does bring failure and mistakes.
Part of being the successful Pixar is that we will take risks on teams and ideas, and some of them won't work out. We only lose from this if we don't respond to the failures. If we respond, and we think it through and figure out how to move ahead, then we're learning from it. That's what Pixar is.
'Balance' is a soft word. It implies calm, something almost yogic, but that's not it at all. The process is always chaotic and turbulent.
With certain ideas, you can predict commercial success. So with a 'Toy Story 3' or a 'Cars 2,' you know the idea is more likely to have financial success. But if you go down that path too far, you become creatively bankrupt because you're just trying to repeat yourself.
Candor is the key to collaborating effectively. Lack of candor leads to dysfunctional environments.
Sometimes a leap of faith doesn't pan out.
I have received a great deal of benefit from the simple yet difficult practice of learning to stop the internal voice in my head. I learned that the voice isn't me, and I don't need to keep rethinking events of the past nor overthink plans for the future. This skill has helped me both to focus and to pause before responding to unexpected events.
If you put out 20 films, you hope that a number are successful. It's like human reproduction versus frog reproduction. Frogs produce thousands and hope a few succeed. Humans don't produce many babies but put a lot of energy into them, which is kind of where we are. They still don't always succeed, but you try a lot harder.
Creativity has to start somewhere, and we are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback, and the iterative process - reworking, reworking, and reworking again until a flawed story finds its through line or a hollow character finds its soul.
For me, one of the great tragedies is the conclusion studios have drawn about traditional animation. I believe that 2D animation could be just as vital as it ever was. I think the problem has been with the stories.
I exercise in the gym about three times a week. I vary the workout every time, but I'll always do some type of circuit work with weights. It gets my heart rate up without putting too much stress on my knees, which for some reason seem to be older than the rest of my body.
Virtual reality's been around for 40 years. People have been talking about storytelling in that world for all these years, and there have been experiments around of people trying to do that, and always excited about it.
Believe me, you don't want to be at a company where there is more candor in the hallways than in the rooms where fundamental ideas or policy are being hashed out.
Every new idea in any field needs protection.
I apply the term 'creativity' broadly... it's problem solving. We are all faced with problems, and we have to address them and think of something new, and that's where creativity comes in.
Encourage people to mingle, meet, and communicate.
I started off life at Pixar with interesting technical problems. But as time has moved on, I found that the social and management problem was far more complex and interesting.
Look at the computer industry. I've watched a lot of companies come and go, some that were right at the pinnacle of their success.