Ed Catmull Quotes

Taking a risk necessitated a willingness to deal with the mess created by the risk.

We start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive,

But when it comes to creativity, the unknown is not our enemy. If we make room for it instead of shunning it, the unknown can bring inspiration and originality.

Candor isn’t cruel. It does not destroy. On the contrary, any successful feedback system is built on empathy, on the idea that we are all in this together, that we understand your pain because we’ve e...

Communication would no longer have to go through hierarchical channels. The exchange of information was key to our business, of course, but I believed that it could—and frequently should—happen out of...

Companies, like individuals, do not become exceptional by believing they are exceptional but by understanding the ways in which they aren’t exceptional.

Cuando eres consciente del problema del asa y la maleta lo ves por todas partes. La gente se aferra a las palabras y las historias, que no son más que sustitutos de la acción real y el significado. Lo...

DISCUSSING FAILURE AND all its ripple effects is not merely an academic exercise. We face it because by seeking better understanding, we remove barriers to full creative engagement. One of the biggest...

Dick Levin’s Buy Low, Sell High, Collect Early, and Pay Late: The Manager’s Guide to Financial Survival,

Even the smartest people can form an ineffective team if they are mismatched. That means it is better to focus on how a team is performing, not on the talents of the individuals within it.

Everyone says they want to hire excellent people, but in truth we don’t really know, at first, who will rise up to make a difference.

FOR MOST OF us, failure comes with baggage—a lot of baggage—that I believe is traced directly back to our days in school. From a very early age, the message is drilled into our heads: Failure is bad;...

For all the care you put into artistry, visual polish frequently doesn’t matter if you are getting the story right.

From a very early age, the message is drilled into our heads: Failure is bad; failure means you didn’t study or prepare; failure means you slacked off or—worse!—aren’t smart enough to begin with. Thus...

Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right. It is easy to say you want talented people, and you do, but the way those people interact with one another is the real key...

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.

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...

I believe the best managers acknowledge and make room for what they do not know—not just because humility is a virtue but because until one adopts that mindset, the most striking breakthroughs cannot...

If I start on a film and right away know the structure—where it’s going, the plot—I don’t trust it, Pete says. I feel like the only reason we’re able to find some of these unique ideas, characters, an...

In big organizations there are advantages to consistency, but I strongly believe that smaller groups within the larger whole should be allowed to differentiate themselves and operate according to thei...