Summary of the Book Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull

In this post I will give you a summary of the book Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull. It was a very compelling and moving book, that explores how to be creative and keep a company creative even as it grows. The subtitle to the book is “Overcoming the unseen forces that stand in the way of true inspiration”.

Ed Catmull was the Co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and is now the President of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation.

I actually cried reading the last chapter, and I can’t remember the last time I ever cried reading a book. That’s how moving it was.

So you want to make great animation films like Toy Story and Monsters Inc? What do you do? What about when computers couldn’t even animate a hand or a human being?

What happens when you do succeed in your first feature film success? How do you stay creative and keep making great movies again and again? How do you keep a growing company from getting too stuck in old ways of thinking?

How do you stay inspired?

What forces might be hindering creativity for you or in your company?

Those are the key questions that Ed uses his biography to address in this book. I’m excited are you?!?!?

Ed Catmull’s Early Days in Computer Animation to Pixar

Ed Catmull’s main aim in the book is to teach how to make an organization stay creative, even as it gets established and large. Though he does move into a chronological description of Pixar Animations Development, he intertwines his efforts to keep Pixar creative and growing.

As a brief chronology, Ed discusses his early history and the founding of Pixar as a computer graphics company. He loved Disney as a kid and loved learning art and drawing. He gave up his idea of animation and ended up with degrees in physics and computer science at the University of Utah.

In graduate school he joined a lab that was working on computer graphics, and one of his projects was to animate his left hand. At the time, computer animation couldn’t do curves like hands at all, and his project was a huge step forward.

He notes that the funding was through ARPA, which was the government’s response to Sputnik. ARPA did not micromanage, just trusted researchers to be creative in whatever they wished. He ended up emulating a lot of that in his later work.

After graduate school he was hired to run a computer animations lab at the New York Institute of Technology on Long Island’s North Shore funded by a multimillionaire named Alex Schure. They got better at animating but were not good at storytelling. So they went over to George Lucas, successful from Star Wars, to run his computer division.

Later when George went through a divorce, he sold the company to Steve Jobs, who was then ousted out from Apple. Though they were very unprofitable for many years, Steve stuck by them as they changed from a computer animation machine company to an actual movie making company.

One of the best parts of the book is getting to know Steve Jobs through Ed Catmull’s and the Pixar staffs’ interactions with him.

“Steve and I gradually found a way to work together. And as we did so, we began to understand each other. You’ll recall the question I asked Steve just before he bought Pixar: How would we resolve conflicts? And his answer, which I found comically egotistical at the time, was that he simply would continue to explain why he was right until I understood. The irony was that this soon became the technique I used with Steve. When we disagreed, I would state my case, but since Steve could think much faster than I could, he would often shoot down my arguments. So I’d wait a week, marshal my thoughts, and then come back and explain it again. He might dismiss my points again, but I would keep coming back until one of three things happened: (1) He would say “Oh, okay, I get it” and give me what I needed; (2) I’d see that he was right and stop lobbying; or (3) our debate would be inconclusive, in which case I’d just go ahead and do what I proposed in the first place. Each outcome was equally likely, but when this third option occurred Steve never questioned me. For all his insistence, he respected passion. If I believed in something that strongly, he seemed to feel, it couldn’t be all wrong. (pp, 54-55)”

Steve helped Pixar negotiate a contract with Disney’s Jeffrey Katzenberg to produce 3 movies for Disney to own and distribute. Jeffrey had also wanted to own Pixar’s technology, but Steve refused and they got the deal that they wanted.

Just before they released Toy Story, their first film under their contract with Disney, Steve decided to take Pixar public. He knew that if Toy Story was a big success, Disney CEO Michael Eisner would realize that they now had a competitor. They would renegotiate their contract to keep Pixar close, as a partner. In order for Pixar to get a 50/50 split, they would need to have the cash to pay for half of the production costs. Hence, they had to raise the money by going public.

Toy Story was a big success and they raised $140 million for the company – the biggest IPO of 1995. Disney did call to renegotiate and they got their 50/50 contract negotiation as partners.

Keeping a Company Creative

Ed has stories intertwined to help us understand the techniques he uses to keep his company creative, and also how he keeps enjoying managing Pixar, and now Disney.

Managers need to trust their people – no micromanaging – no meeting before the meeting

He talks about how when they were making Toy Story, he found out after the movie was a success that the production team didn’t want to stay on as full time staff because they felt like 2nd class citizens. He found out that the reason for the problem was that the production team had everyone check in with their manager before they could talk to anyone else in the project – too much micromanaging.

Ed had a company wide meeting where he told everyone that if an animator needed to talk to a modeler or whatever, just do it. The managers can find out later and that’s fine. It took time but he eliminated the micromanaging and everyone felt better working there.

He also mentioned that some managers like to know what will happen before the go in a meeting, so they won’t be surprised. He says that just wastes time, as you have to have a meeting before the meeting!

Braintrusts – Masterminds – Candor

Ed talks a lot about Braintrusts which are like masterminds where people in the project get together to get constructive feedback. In order for the process to work, the director who is open to criticism needs understand that what people are saying is not negative towards them as a person, but is towards the project.

The people in the braintrust need to be open and not afraid to hurt the director’s feelings.

In order to build up a place that is safe for that kind of candor Ed as the manager of the company has to himself be open to constructive criticism from those under him as well.