Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixer, on Creativity, Inc. Creativity in an organization is very difficult because people hold back and dont speak candidly for very valid reasons that they wont admit to, such as not wanting to embarrass themselves in front of the boss or embarrass the boss. Trust is very hard to earn and people often cant trust each other until they have been through failure with each other. Making a creative brain trust requires getting the dynamics correct, regardless of the problem being solved. On Steve Jobs, he says Steve Jobs learned from his failures where he overreached, and learned to become more empathetic, but nobody knows about it because people who went through that transition with him stayed with him for life, but wouldnt talk about Steve with anybody while he was alive, so the rest of the world didnt know and stories about the old Steve still circulated. New ideas, such as for a new idea, are fragile in the beginning and can look ugly, and it takes a lot of work to make them engaging. Were even more biased than confirmation bias; we twist words to mean what we think the mean, so telling people things that are true doesnt actually change peoples behavior. The first conclusions are almost always wrong, and also the second and third. At Pixar theres never a conflict between the showcasing technology over art because there is no line between the two. You need the truth to be able to come from anywhere and out of order (out of the organizational hierarchy). The goal is, There is no communication hierarchy. You have to balance new and old people in a group -- if a group is all people who have worked together before, its too closed a group. Groups need to be tweaked until the click into place. If that doesnt happen, you have massive failures and restarts. In the film industry, distribution is changing and there are now 3 forms of long-format storytelling: long-form television, live-action films, and the Pixar & Disney model. What stays the same is that storytelling is not just entertainment: it is the way we communicate with each other. We tell stories to our children, we have news stories, even non-fiction books. Storytelling is the way humans communicate.
Posted on: Mon, 12 May 2014 03:12:08 +0000
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