📘 Creativity, Inc.

I used to have just one management book that I recommended to everyone, always: Peopleware. Now there’s a second one. Eighteen years have passed between them for me.

Creativity, Inc. is an absolutely brilliant book, and Ed Catmull is an absolutely brilliant manager. Almost all of the ideas transfer perfectly to software product companies (where creativity is essential).

A few things that stood out to me in particular:

Braintrust — a group that meets regularly to critique a film. However, all final decisions are made by the film’s director. He may ignore the group entirely, adopt a couple of ideas, or implement all of them. It’s his call.

The desire and lack of fear to make mistakes. Thousands of hours were often spent on unnecessary scenes that were later cut. But until those scenes were created, no one could know whether they were necessary. Mistakes in the creative process are part of the process itself—they’re inevitable.

Ed’s clear understanding of the role of chance and his refusal to overestimate the success of individuals. That’s rare among managers. It was almost shocking to read such a chapter in a book about a successful company. Usually, leaders puff out their chests and tell stories about all the right decisions they made. Ed doesn’t. He feels like one of us.

Acceptance of uncertainty. Most managers love to plan everything. Ed doesn’t.

It’s hard to resist sharing a few quotes:

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

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“if you put your faith in slow, deliberative planning in the hopes it will spare you failure down the line—well, you’re deluding yourself. … The overplanners just take longer to be wrong (and, when things inevitably go awry, are more crushed by the feeling that they have failed)”

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“When it comes to creative endeavors, the concept of zero failures is worse than useless. It is counterproductive.”

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“Originality is fragile. And, in its first moments, it’s often far from pretty. This is why I call early mock-ups of our films “ugly babies.” They are not beautiful, miniature versions of the adults they will grow up to be. They are truly ugly: awkward and unformed, vulnerable and incomplete. They need nurturing—in the form of time and patience—in order to grow. What this means is that they have a hard time coexisting with the Beast.”

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“Making the process better, easier, and cheaper is an important aspiration, something we continually work on—but it is not the goal. Making something great is the goal.”

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“So: When is that magic moment when we shift from protection to engagement? This is sort of like asking the mama bird how she knows it’s time to nudge her baby out of the nest. Will the baby have the strength to fly on its own? Will it figure out how to use its wings on the way down, or will it crash to earth? The fact is, we struggle with this question on every film.”

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“In many ways, the work of a critic is easy,” Ego says. “We risk very little yet enjoy a position over those who offer up their work and their selves to our judgment. We thrive on negative criticism, which is fun to write and to read. 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. But there are times when a critic truly risks something, and that is in the discovery and defense of the new. The world is often unkind to new talent, new creations. The new needs friends”

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“Even though copying what’s come before is a guaranteed path to mediocrity, it appears to be a safe choice, and the desire to be safe—to succeed with minimal risk—can infect not just individuals but also entire companies.”