Ed Catmull: “Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming The Unseen Forces That Stand In The Way Of True Inspiration”
Ed Catmull: worked on digital films in 1974. He thought it would take 10 years. It ended up taking 20.
Managing is problem-solving, which is a creative activity. By being open, we attracted the best people.
Toyota turned solving the manufacturing problems into a creative activity. The first versions of all of our films suck. The original toy story was predictable.
The second version introduced the choice of living forever without love, introducing tension. We never look at outside scripts.
We look to create a team that will tell a story. You can try to create creativity, or you can remove creative blocks that you know about. If you don’t fail, you’re screwing up in a different way. The team members have no power to make the final decision. The director does. So the team does better because the power is out of the equation. The object should not be to avoid failure, but to make it safe to fail. You can applaud the failures for trying.
A healthy environment is not one in which one department (marking, finance, ect) wins.