One of the most significant animation companies in recent years is definitely Pixar. Everyone can recognise its iconic logo of a desk lamp – called Luxo Jr. after an early short film.

Now the company’s CEO, Ed Catmull has written a book not only about how the company came about, but also how Pixar manages to keep above the competition. It turns out that Pixar has honed a way of getting everyone in the company motivated and involved in the projects.

In the book, Catmull goes in great depth about a concept called Braintrust, which essentially is a grouping of talented people who can have a candid conversation around a table about projects in production. In the words of Catmull:

Put smart, passionate people in a room together, charge them with identifying and solving problems, and encourage them to be candid. The Braintrust is not foolproof, but when we get it right, the results are phenomenal.

The results of these meetings are, in Catmull’s words, often eye-opening insights into how well a story is progressing. There is no pressure for the director to follow any of the advice, but many usually do, because they realise that the feedback was constructive.

As in any other business, Pixar has had to deal with failure. Although thirteen consecutive films have gone on to become international blockbusters, the company’s beginning was hard, especially at the time when Pixar was sold to Steve Jobs. Catmull, who headed the company from the very start, says that mistakes can make a company strong, if approached in a correct way:

I’m not the first to say that failure, when approached properly, can be an opportunity for growth. But the way most people interpret this assertion is that mistakes are a necessary evil. Mistakes aren’t a necessary evil. They aren’t evil at all. They are an inevitable consequence of doing something new (and, as such, should be seen as valuable; without them, we’d have no originality). And yet, even as I say that embracing failure is an important part of learning, I also acknowledge that acknowledging this truth is not enough. That’s because failure is painful, and our feelings about this pain tend to screw up our understanding of its worth. To disentangle the good and the bad parts of failure, we have to recognize both the reality of the pain and the benefit of the resulting growth.

A lot has already been written about the book, and is a must-read for those interested in modern ways of doing business. Forbes magazine has written that Creativity Inc. “just might be the best business book ever written.”

by Roberto Galea

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