There is no growth or success without change. For
That means any outcome is a good outcome, because it yields new information.
Story plays a role in the budget process when building reels.
Pete has a few methods he uses to help manage people through the fears brought on by pre-production chaos. Sometimes in meetings, I sense people seizing up, not wanting to even talk about changes, he...
Our short films are Pixar’s way of experimenting, and we produce them in the hopes of getting exactly these kinds of glimpses. Over the years, Pixar has become known for including short films at the b...
Originality is fragile. And, in its first moments, it’s often far from pretty.
Once the whittling process was complete, Tom needed to find out roughly how many people were interested in each discussion topic so that he could plan the day accordingly. To that end, the Notes Day W...
My rule of thumb is that any time we impose limits or procedures, we should ask how they will aid in enabling people to respond creatively. If the answer is that they won’t, then the proposals are ill...
Managers of creative companies must never forget to ask themselves: How do we tap the brainpower of our people?
Keep on going, even when things look bleak.
In 1997, executives at Disney came to us with a request: Could we make Toy Story 2 as a direct-to-video release—that is, not release it in theaters? At the time, Disney’s suggestion made a lot of sens...
In 1995, when Steve Jobs was trying to convince us that we should go public, one of his key arguments was that we would eventually make a film that failed at the box office, and we needed to be prepar...
If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better. The take...
If we start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive, we become more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse.
If we can agree that it’s hard, if not impossible, to get a complete picture of what is going on at any given time in any given company, it becomes even harder when you are successful. That’s because...
Ideas, though, are not singular. They are forged through tens of thousands of decisions, often made by dozens of people.
IN THINKING ABOUT this chapter and about the limits of our perception, a familiar, oft-repeated phrase kept popping into my head: Hindsight is 20–20. When we hear it, we normally just nod in agreement...
I tend to flood and freeze up if I’m feeling overwhelmed. When this happens, it’s usually because I feel like the world is crashing down and all is lost. One trick I’ve learned is to force myself to m...
I believe that we all have the potential to solve problems and express ourselves creatively. What stands in our way are these hidden barriers—the misconceptions and assumptions that impede us without...
His method for taking the measure of a room was saying something definitive and outrageous—These charts are bullshit! or This deal is crap!—and watching people react. If you were brave enough to come...