Book Review: Creativity, Inc.

Ed Catmull's book Creativity, Inc is an excellent book for both the history of Pixar, and the business lessons managing creative teams and people.

First off, I’m biased. I love Pixar. I love their movies. I’ve watched several behind-the-scenes and making of movies about Pixar. I was even lucky enough to get a tour of their campus. So I’m predisposed to liking something about them. With that said, even if you do not like Pixar but are interested in business organization & management there is still quite a bit to get out of Creativity, Inc.

The book covers the CEO Ed Catmull career at Pixar from the beginning of starting the company, to selling it and taking over Disney Animation. He discusses the numerous challenges they faced along the way and packages them up into thoughtful management advice.

Here are a handful of quotable quotes from the book to give a sense of its content:

"Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better. If you get the team right, chances are that they’ll get the ideas right."

"When looking to hire people, give their potential to grow more weight than their current skill level. What they will be capable of tomorrow is more important than what they can do today."

"Many managers feel that if they are not notified about problems before others are or if they are surprised in a meeting, then it is a sign of disrespect. Get over it."

"The desire for everything to run smoothly is a false goal -- it leads to measuring people by the mistakes they make rather than by their ability to solve problems."

"Excellence, quality, and good should be earned words, attributed by others to us, not proclaimed by us about ourselves."

Length: 370 pages Reading Time: 8 days