I have read a very interesting book this summer — “Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration” — by Ed Catmull, one of the co-founders of ‘Pixar Animation Studios’ and currently president of both ‘Pixar’ and ‘Walt Disney Animation Studios’.
This book is not so much about Pixar and its movies but rather on getting an insight and learn about the principles applied by Ed to enable and protect a healthy creative culture. Interesting is that those principles are not particularly tailored towards Pixar only but can be applied to any kind of (non-)creative environment.
The history of Pixar and its movies are used as cases/examples on how those principles were applied and serve as such as an interesting insight on the growth of such a company and the problems it encounters … especially with its core assets … namely its employees.
But overall the principles presented by Ed are in my honest opinion applicable to almost any company and we can all learn a great deal out of them — even if one is not in a managing position.
