True Inspiration from Pixar. Part 1: Core Values

One of the recent books that really inspired me is Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar Animation. It’s presented as a book about creative leadership and management principles that helped Pixar to build unique culture and become the best animation studio in the world. But it's much more than that.

What makes this book special for me? It's not just practical advice, but the story of a long way for a dream came true.

Book starts with Pixar’s history. Did you know that Pixar originally began with creating graphic design programs and selling special computers for them? From a young age, Ed Catmull dreamed about making computer-animated feature films (Disney films were all hand-drawn). But no one believed in his idea, so Pixar was focused on improving how computers processed and displayed graphic data.

Things changed in 1977 with the release of Star Wars by George Lucas. The era of computer effects started. For a few years, Pixar was a part of Lucasfilm, but the dream of making a fully animated movie wasn’t achieved.

In 1986, Steve Jobs bought Pixar, and the team finally had the chance to work on their first film. Toy Story in 1995 became a Pixar triumph. It was first fully computer-animated film in the world, it was extremely successful and it really changed the animation industry. But it was only the beginning. It took a lot of efforts to create next movies with the same quality, scale company culture, support creativity, keep company core values with its growth. Today, Pixar is part of Disney but operates as a separate division with its own vision, ideas, and projects.

Lessons learnt from the growth:
✏️ Building the right team is the foundation for success.
✏️ Focus on teamwork, not on individual talents.
✏️ Focus on the people, their habits, values, help them to reveal their talents.
✏️ People are more important than ideas because people create ideas.
✏️ Quality must be a set as a main condition before project start.

To be continued....

#booknook #softskills #leadership