The co-founder and longtime president of Pixar updates and expands upon his New York Times bestseller on creative leadership, reflecting on the management principles used to build Pixar’s singularly successful culture, including what he got wrong—and how he made it right.
In 1986, Ed Catmull co-founded Pixar, a modest start-up with an immodest goal: to make the first-ever computer animated movie. Nine years later, Pixar released Toy Story, which went on to establish Pixar as one of the most successful and innovative companies on earth. In 2014, Catmull shared the secrets behind the culture he helped build in Creativity, Inc., which has become a kind of bible for effective, nurturing leadership. His sometimes counterintuitive advice includes giving a mediocre idea to a great team (because they’ll either fix it or come up with something better) and not worrying about preventing risks (because it’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them).
Now, Catmull is updating Creativity, Inc. to account for the years after it was published and to further illuminate the development of the unique culture at Pixar. Featuring a new introduction, two entirely new chapters, four new chapter postscripts, and a series of reflections at the end, this new edition details how Catmull built a culture that doesn’t just pay lip service to the importance of things like honesty, communication, and originality, but commits to them. Although he once believed that core values were unnecessary to an organization, after surveying his employees, he came up with four guideposts to center Pixar’s work: community, innovation, ownership, and authenticity.
As Catmull has discovered, pursuing excellence isn’t a one-off assignment, but an ongoing, day-in, day-out, full-time job. And Creativity, Inc. explores how it is done.
