Creativity, Inc.

Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration
by Ed Catmull,  Amy Wallace  340 pages

“What does it mean to manage well?”

This is the idea that Ed Catmull, a co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios, explores in this book about creativity in business. Catmull takes you through the history of Pixar but also explores management topics along the way, explaining how Pixar has learned to do things in a way that works really well for them.  He and his colleagues have built an organizational culture that is based on philosophies including:

• Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better.
• It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them.
• A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody.

I had heard about this book in a webinar and thought it would make for an interesting read, both as a history of Pixar and as a management book.  I found some pretty thought-provoking things here about management (and I made a bunch of notes), but the book is also an interesting read as a history of Pixar, a company that has seen a lot of ups and downs.  I appreciated how this book was a combination, so some of the management philosophies would be illustrated by clear examples of how Pixar works through problems and difficult situations.