I began to see my role as a leader more clearly. I would devote myself to learning how to build not just a successful company but a sustainable creative culture.
Here are the qualifications required: The people you choose must (a) make you think smarter and (b) put lots of solutions on the table in a short amount of time.
Having a finite list of problems is much better than having an illogical feeling that everything is wrong.
From that day on, I resolved to bring as many hidden problems as possible to light, a process that would require what might seem like an uncommon commitment to self-assessment.
For all the care you put into artistry, visual polish frequently doesn’t matter if you are getting the story right.
Failure was being used as a weapon, rather than as an agent of learning.
Did you arrive early to work because you left on time, planned ahead, and drove carefully? Or were you just in the right place at the right time? Most people would choose the former answer without a s...
Creative people must accept that challenges never cease, failure can’t be avoided, and vision is often an illusion.
Countless times, I remember watching him toss ideas—pretty far-out ideas—into the air, just to see how they played. And if they didn’t play well, he would move on.
But the bitter truth we critics must face is that in the grand scheme of things, the average piece of junk is probably more meaningful than our criticism designating it so.
Before I go on, I want to say something about the word protection. I worry that because it has such a positive connotation, by implication anything being protected seems, ipso facto, worth protecting.
Because your rational mind knows that tunnels have two ends, your emotional mind can be kept in check when pitch blackness descends in the confusing middle. Instead of collapsing into a nervous mess,...
Among the handful of companies that were trying to solve these problems, most embraced a culture of strictly enforced, even CIA-like secrecy. We were in a race, after all, to be the first to make a co...
Always try to hire people who are smarter than you. Always take a chance on better, even if it seems like a potential threat.
ARPA had been created in response to Sputnik, and one of its key organizing principles was that collaboration could lead to excellence.
A quien pueda inspirar —escribió Austin en el encabezamiento—. Yo, como muchos de los artistas de esta empresa, me muevo constantemente entre dos estados. El primero (y mucho más preferible de los dos...
The founding of Pixar University and Elyse Klaidman’s mind-expanding drawing classes in particular. Those first classes were such a success—of the 120 people who worked at Pixar then, 100 enrolled—tha...
Puede quedarse con alguien a quien ama, sabiendo que finalmente será descartado, o puede volar a un mundo donde se verá protegido para siempre, pero sin el amor para el que fue hecho. Esta es una auté...
Just as individuals have biases and jump to conclusions because of the lens through which they view the world, organizations perceive the world through what they already know how to do.
It seemed like every issue, big or small, that arose around this time was chalked up to the merger: You said things wouldn’t change! You’re breaking your word! We don’t want to lose the old Pixar! I s...