How Pixar Fosters Collective creativity

Pixar Animation Studios is an Academy Award ®-winning computer animation studio with the technical, creative and production capabilities to create a new generation of animated feature films, merchandise and other related products. Pixar's objective is to combine proprietary technology and world-class creative talent to develop computer-animated feature films with memorable characters and heartwarming stories that appeal to audiences of all ages.

Pixar Animation Studios, a wholly-owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company, is an Academy Award®-winning film studio with world-renowned technical, creative and production capabilities in the art of computer animation. Creator of some of the most successful and beloved animated films of all time, including "Toy Story," "Finding Nemo," "The Incredibles," "Cars," "Ratatouille," and most recently, "WALL•E." The Northern California studio has won 21 Academy Awards and its nine films have grossed more than $4.5 billion at the worldwide box office to date. The next film release from Disney•Pixar is UP (May 29, 2009).

Toy Story, released November 22, 1995, reflects more than nine years of creative and technical achievements. The film received tremendous critical acclaim and became the highest grossing film of 1995, generating $362 million in worldwide box office receipts. Toy Story's director and Disney · Pixar's chief creative officer, John Lasseter, received a Special Achievement Academy Award® for his "inspired leadership of the Pixar Toy Story team resulting in the first feature-length computer animated film."

Pixar has since released A Bug's Life, Toy Story 2, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, and The Incredibles. The six films combined have grossed more than $3.2 billion at the worldwide box office, and Pixar now has six of the top grossing animated films of all time. Toy Story 2, at the time of release, broke numerous opening weekend records all over the world and won a Golden Globe award for Best Picture, Musical or Comedy in 1999.

In 2001, Pixar released the Academy Award®-winning Monsters, Inc., which reached over $100 million at the domestic box office in just 9 days, faster than any animated film in history at the time of its release. Monsters, Inc.'s opening-weekend gross of $62.6 million marked the largest 3-day opening ever for an animated film, the largest 3-day opening in the history of The Walt Disney Studios, the largest 3-day opening in the history of Pixar Animation Studios, and the sixth-largest opening in industry history - records that Monsters, Inc. held until the release of Finding Nemo.

On May 30, 2003, Pixar released Finding Nemo which broke every one of Monsters, Inc.'s opening weekend box office records that had been set only 18-months earlier. Finding Nemo generated $865 million at the global box office and received the Academy Award® for Best Animated Feature Film.

The Incredibles, released in 2004, continued Pixar's success both critically and at the box-office. The film grossed $70.2 million in its first weekend of release in the United States and performed similarly throughout the rest of the world. The film earned more than $620 million worldwide, elevating it to the second highest grossing Pixar film and amongst the 25 highest grossing film of all time. In addition to a multitude of prestigious accolades, praise for The Incredibles has culiminated in a Pixar-record: four Academy Award® nominations.

Directed by Academy Award®-winner John Lasseter, "Cars" opened in theaters on June 9, 2006. “Cars” was the 2007 Golden Globe winner for Best Animated Feature Film and received Academy Award® nominations for Best Animated Feature Film and Best Music - Original Song. The film also won the 2007 Grammy Award for Best Song Written for Motion Picture, Television or Other Visual Media. "Cars" was the #1 animated film on DVD for 2006, and the Disney•Pixar's "Cars" Original Motion Picture Soundtrack debuted in June 2006 at #8, making it the first Pixar soundtrack to enter the Billboard Top 10 and to ship gold.

Many people believe that good iesa are rarer and more valuable than good people, Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, couldn’t disagree more. That notion, he says, is rooted in a misguided view of creativity that exg-gerates the importance of the initial ideas in devel-opening an original product. And it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how to manage the large risks inherent in producing breakthroughs.

In filmmaking and many other kinds of complex product development, creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many inherently unforeseeable problems. The trick to fostering collective creativity. Catmull says, is threefold : Place the creative authority for product development firmly in the hands of the project learders (as opposed to corporate executives), build a culture and processes that encourage people to share their work-in-progress and support one another as peers; and dismantle the natural barriers that divide disciplines.

Mindful of the rise and fall of so many tech companies, Catmull has also sought ways to continuslly challenge Pixar’s assumptions and search for the flaws that could destroy its culture. Clear values. Constant communication, routine postmortems, and the regular injection of outsiders who will challenge the status quo are necessary but not enough to stay on the rails. Strong leadership is essential to make sure people don’t pay lip service to those standards. For example. Catmull comes to the orientation sessions for all new hires, where he ta lks about the mistakes Pixar has made so people don’t assume that just because the company is successful, everything it does is right. Learn more How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity


Source : Harvard Business Review