Book Review - Creativity, Inc. #1

Discovery Shoppe Book Club comes up with two thought-provoking book reviews per month. These reviews give a good summary of our current read and also serve as a guide to potential readers. Read through for the first half of Creativity, Inc. Bet you'd love to work in an environment that fosters creativity, innovation and teamwork? Then Creativity Inc is one of your go-to guides to make that happen.

Creativity, Inc.: Chapters 1-9

This exciting book was written based on over 30 years of experience of Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar, an award-winning animation company. It is an instructional guide for instilling inspiration and nurturing creativity amongst employees, managers and C-suite folks.

Wondering how big films like Toy Story, A Bug's Life, Finding Nemo, Wall E and even most recently Inside Out were made? Ed laid out Pixar's creative processes, giving his readers access to behind-the-scenes of the production process.

The first two parts of the book consist of nine chapters that examine Ed's early life, career growth, and management style at Pixar, all of which were impacted by the Disney artists he grew up watching and his intense experience at the University of Utah. The action step to inspire creativity and foster better communication is a significant takeaway from these chapters. 

According to Ed, establishing feedback systems is an effective way of encouraging creativity and innovation among employees and should be valued by the organisation. This will allow information to be shared without restrictions across all levels in an organisation aiding the creative process. To him, hierarchies have an impact on honest employee feedback and the small details that we often ignore during meetings can go a long way toward encouraging team collaboration.

Creativity, Inc. also examined the concept of failure and provides many examples of how the fear of failure limits an organisation's success. According to Ed, “Failure isn’t a necessary evil. In fact, it isn’t evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new.” Ed's thoughts and suggested solutions can be applied not only in our career but our lives generally. His underlying argument is that “Fear of failure prevents innovation”. He also discussed other important concepts like Change and Randomness - which is our ability to separate luck and other randomness in our success story. Its importance is to know what actually contributed to our success in order to replicate it. 

The crux of the book for us has to be Chapter 5 which talked about Honesty and Candor. Here, an independent unit in Pixar called Braintrust was established to critique works at the company. Its job was to bring the best out of each production coming out of the organisation. Braintrust was successful because of the team's honesty and candor, and the ability to differentiate between criticism and constructive criticism. According to Ed, “A lively debate in a Braintrust meeting is not being waged in the hopes of any one person winning the day. To the extent there is “argument,” it seeks only to excavate the truth.” To Ed, “the Braintrust is valuable because it broadens your perspective, allowing you to peer—at least briefly—through others’ eyes.”

One defining creative principle for Pixar was the need to "Trust the Process” which he illustrated with an Ugly Baby and a Hungry Beast. An ugly baby he likened to an idea that is awkward, unformed, vulnerable and incomplete - they are truly ugly- and should be protected and sheltered from the mature Hungry Beast, which is an idea, movie, or finished film that is already striking, resonant, and meaningful - fully grown, if you will. Trusting the process means preventing the natural impulse to compare your ugly baby idea to previously finished and successful films - the Hungry Beast. Protecting the babies from being judged too quickly with standards only the mature can meet fosters creativity and the ability to explore without fear of failure.

What do you think about people and ideas in a workplace? Which do you think is important? Well, Ed Catmull believes that people are always greater than ideas and we agree with him. 

“Give a good idea to a mediocre team and they’ll screw it up, give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team and they’ll either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better” and “Getting the right people and the right chemistry is more important than getting the right idea.”

Here are some nuggets we picked up: 

In business, a very good business plan is not enough to secure sponsorship(s). In the words of Steve Jobs, you must also have “insanely great product(s).”

On collaboration, creative collaboration is not possible without trust and trust is not possible if an essential ingredient, candor, is missing. The Braintrust emphasizes this. 

In negotiation, clarity is the heartbeat of a successful negotiation.

Ultimately, Creativity, Inc. is definitely a book filled with a wealth of lessons, ideas, and problem-solving solutions from experience. It’s a 7.5/ 10 rating from us. 

Did you know Steve Jobs was heavily involved with Pixar? Well, check out the book to learn more.

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- Bode & Olanrewaju

Discovery Shoppe Book Club

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