How Pixar Fosters a Creative Community

When the media lists creative companies, Disney’s Pixar often falls at the top of the list. And how could anyone disagree? Since the release of Toy Story in 1995, Pixar has debuted a strong line of eight animated blockbusters. The surprising thought is that Pixar never bought or licensed a single script, song or character; everything was created behind their doors by their talented employees.Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull writes in an article for the Harvard Business Review on how to cultivate a sustainable, creative organization. Their secret: work in a group.

People tend to think of creativity as a mysterious solo act, and they typically reduce products to a single idea: This is a movie about toys, or dinosaurs, or love, they’ll say. However, 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 problems [...] The director and the other creative leaders of a production do not come up with all the ideas on their own; rather, every single member of the 200- to 250-person production group makes suggestions. Creativity must be present at every level of every artistic and technical part of the organization. The leaders sort through a mass of ideas to find the ones that fit into a coherent whole—that support the story—which is a very difficult task. It’s like an archaeological dig where you don’t know what you’re looking for or whether you will even find anything. The process is downright scary.    

Catmull offers advice for every organization when he says, “Creativity must be present at every level of every artistic and technical part of the organization.”  He also touches on the topic of taking risks. Executives are typically accustomed to reducing potential risks in an organization, but Pixar embraces new concepts. According to Catmull, when executives avoid risks, they fail to surprise anyone. That may be why Hollywood continues to be criticized for releasing similar or redundant films. From a business perspective, the goal of avoiding risks may be why we’re seeing so many similar business models in new organizations.