Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

by Ed Catmull

As a young man, Ed Catmull had a dream: to make the world's first computer-animated movie. Following a Ph.D. at the University of Utah, where many computer science pioneers got their start, Catmull secured a partnership with George Lucas which led indirectly to his founding Pixar with Steve Jobs and John Lasseter in 1986. Nine years later and against all odds, Toy Story was released, changing animation forever. Since then, Pixar has dominated the world of animation scoring box-office records and twenty-seven Academy Awards with films such as Monsters Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, WALL-E and, most recently, Inside Out. The joy of the storytelling, inventive plots and emotional authenticity; you might say Pixar movies are emblematic of what creativity really is. Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers and creatives alike. It is also the first all-access trip into the nerve centre of Pixar Animation Studios - into the story meetings, the post-mortems and the 'Braintrust' sessions where our favourite films are born.
It is a book about how to creative and sustain a creative culture but it is also, as Ed Catmull writes, 'an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.'

• ISBN10: 0552167266
• ISBN13: 9780552167260
• Publish Date: 1 January 2098 (first published 8 April 2014)
• Publish Status: Postponed Indefinitely
• Publish Country: GB
• Publisher: Transworld Publishers Ltd
• Imprint: Corgi Books
• Format: Paperback (B-Format (198x129 mm))
• Pages: 320
• Language: English

Reviews

[adamfortuna]

The full title for this one is "Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration". Hearing the title and knowing it was written by Ed Catmull, one of the cofounders of Pixar, was enough to draw me in. As someone who works in technology, but also leans towards ways of managing projects, this one hit on a long list of points that were relavant to working at Code School. Although on a completely different level, the way Pixar puts out pictures each year with multiple teams and different departments is similar to Code Schools monthly course structure. Page after page I saw problems that were familiar to me, and how they solved them at Pixar.