Creativity, Inc.

Book Review

The book is an inspiring narrative of Ed Catmulls lifelong career lessons about creativity. Ed, co-

founder of Pixar and President of Pixar and Disney Animation, has created the animation film

industry. His story does not lack for insights, its successes and failures can easily be applied even

in other industries besides animation film-making. The book was divided into four parts. The first

part, Getting Started, conveys the story of Ed as a young boy dreaming of being an animator.

Joining the University of Utah, he learned about creative culture. He met his Pixar co-founder,

John Lasseter while working in Lucas Film. When George Lucas sold their department to Steve

Jobs, Pixar Animation Studios was then formed. Protecting the new is the second part of the book

that speaks about the importance of trust and candor in attaining a creative culture and reframing

failure as a learning experience. It also relates the importance of safeguarding original ideas

despite its not so pretty state. Building and sustaining provide readers with a summary of mental

models employed by Pixar to sustain creativity and to bring up the energy of its employees. The

last section, Testing What We Know, discusses the details of the merger between Disney and Pixar.

Ed also introduced the concept of Notes Day which is a day-long event that shuts down Pixars

production so everyone can participate in identifying problems as well as offering solutions to

those problems.

I bought Creativity, Inc. a week before I left the Philippines. I remembered reading the first chapter

in a bookstore where the opening story was about how a long, rectangular table with name cards

can lead to feelings of marginalization that inhibit creativity. This affected me because all the

Boardrooms Ive attended has the same setup, and yet I never questioned nor noticed his

observations. The first chapter intrigued me so that long story short, I was hooked. I even hand

carried the book on my flight going to the US.

Even after reading the entire book, the first chapter was still my favorite. Dont get me wrong, the

entire book was excellent, but the first chapter revealed a lot about Ed that it has set a good

foundation for the story. His awareness of his influences and biases from the start made me

understand how he became what he is now. Having Disney and Einstein as his boyhood idols, his

imagination took him to places and influenced his outlook on creativity which leads to his dream

of becoming an animator. What I admire most in this chapter is how he pursued his dream, failed

and created his own path. Knowing he is not good enough to be an animator, he developed a way

to animate with a computer. His innovativeness was harnessed in a University program that trusted

their students and gave them enough freedom to pursue whatever interested them. This creative

culture resulted to a collaborative, supportive community so inspiring that he would later replicate

it at Pixar. This made me realize the reason why Andy keeps on reminding the class of how

important a no judgment policy creates a safe-space and that we are all in this together as a

cohort and in turn encourage our creativeness to break free.

Choosing my least favorite chapter was very difficult. Each section was interesting on its own as

insights were in abundance and problems were solved in impressively innovative ways. When

forced, choose the chapter with the name Fear and Failure because I dont think I can go wrong

with this. Right? A fearless culture allows people to explore their creativity without barriers.

It encourages going through uncharted courses with confidence even when they hit a dead end and

need to restart again. They believe that You cannot plan your way out of the problem. Being a

Risk Manager, these statements somehow rubs me the wrong way. In the corporate world, these

statements would be a hard sell given the fact that failure equates to money lost and money is a

very scarce resource. But then again, the book still mentioned that this specifically applies to
industries with creative endeavors. So, it is my least favorite because it is a lesson which I cannot

apply in my field.

The entire Part II of the book is a discussion of enablers and barriers of creativity, which were all

in line with what weve discussed in class. Ed speaks about how the word Honesty can be a barrier

due to its moral connotation, instead, he encourages for his employees to be more candid. Candid

feedback and iterative process until a flawed story find its through line or a hollow character finds

its soul is similar to the process we implement in a class where we present our innovative project.

In class, we receive constructive criticisms and reframe the problem and solution space until we

converge to the final solution. Another barrier mentioned in the book was The Hungry Beast and

the Ugly Baby. This chapter explains that Originality is fragile. And, in its first moments, its

often far from pretty. This is why I call early mock-ups of our films ugly babies. When I read

this chapter, the first thing that came to mind was the prototyping stage of our Innovation Project.

Even if Nicolas explained that what the class initially showed was not a prototype per se, he still

encouraged the class stating that he was happy with the outcome and gave us another chance to

brainstorm another prototype. The teachers protected our babies from being judged too quickly in

order to give time for greatness to emerge. One of the rules that I love in our class is that Andy

never says No, meaning nothing really is wrong. This idea was discussed in Change and

Randomness chapter of the book. In order to spur creativity, Pixar created a culture that dont

vilify their mistakes. Creating a safe space where making a mistake is ok allows people to relax

and when a random problem pops up, it causes no panic, because the threat of failure has been

defanged. The last chapter of Part II, which is The Hidden, was more connected to Thinking

about Thinking module. This chapter was all about acknowledging your own blind spots. It also
discussed the importance of having a healthy creative culture in order for people to readily add

their viewpoints to illuminate those blind spots.

Chapter by chapter, Ed was able to describe Pixars creative processes along with the managerial

lessons to be learned. I find the book to be useful in school since the lessons were linked to our

modules, at work since real life problems were answered with real life innovative solutions and in

personal life because of the wisdom it imparts. The best clichd line in the book was But always

always walk your talk. Despite the antiquated motto, this line still struck me the most because

of where it was applied. In keeping the safe space culture, where failures are not vilified, Ed did

not look for the person responsible for accidentally deleting Toy Story 2 which may pose a serious

threat to the financial well-being of Pixar if it was not resolved. Not applying the blame game at

such a stressful scenario is something I consider a real inspiration.

I liked reading the book but it was inevitable because I love Pixar and I admire Steve Jobs. I

enjoyed all the Steve Jobs bits in the story because it made me compare the scenario unfolding

with how it was written in the Steve Jobs biography. The difference in perspective revealed how

contrasted their personalities were: Ed was empathically down-to-earth with attainable lessons to

impart while Steve was larger than life inspirational. Yet, both were creative in their own different

ways. My favorite part of the book is how Ed always starts by questioning the situation, then

realizing the answer and applying his realization in a business standpoint. It is basically practicing

Thinking about Thinking and Enhancing Creativity classes to the real world scenarios. For

example, in The Hidden chapter, Ed enumerated the things that we need to be aware of: clinging

to what works, fearing change, and deluding ourselves about our roles in our own success. He

then provided the mechanisms or the enablers to creativity: candor (additive feedback), safety
(trust), research, self-assessment and protecting the new (building not killing new ideas). And all

these elements are then related to real-Pixar scenarios.

The book was a good and easy read and I highly recommend for my classmates to read this book.

If you think it is interesting to know how our lessons were applied in the continuous success of

Pixar then read the book. However, in my opinion, I prefer if I have read the book before the

BMBA class started. It would have been a great source of insights for both Thinking and Creativity

modules.

Appendix
Table of Contents
Introduction: Lost and Found
Part I: Getting Started
Chapter 1: Animated
Chapter 2: Pixar is Born
Chapter 3: A Defining Goal
Chapter 4: Establishing Pixars Identity

Part II: Protecting the New

Chapter 5: Honesty and Candor
Chapter 6: Fear and Failure
Chapter 7: The Hungry Beast
Chapter 8: Change and Randomness
Chapter 9: The Hidden

Part III: Building and Sustaining

Chapter 10: Broadening our View
Chapter 11: The Unmade Future

Part IV: Testing What We Know

Chapter 12: A New Challenge
Chapter 13: Notes Daily

Afterword: The Steve We Knew

Starting Points: Thoughts for Managing a Creative Culture
Acknowledgements
Index