Innovate the Pixar Way and Bill in E! Online Article

 

http://www.eonline.com/news/331520/finding-nemo-2-toy-story-4-has-pixar-run-out-of-ideas

Innovate the Pixar Way for Filmmakers

The PIXAR Method: Tricks of the Hit Machine

By John Ott

photo by: JD Hancock

At the time of writing, PIXAR has released its 12th number one box office film, Cars 2. In an industry that expects one out of ten releases to be hit films, their critical and box office track record is unprecedented. Not even the early Disney studio had such a run of success.

You could credit the talents of people who work there, from Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter on down. They are immensely talented people, to be sure. But there are plenty of people with talent in Hollywood. Why has no other studio had the same success?

I believe that PIXAR has certain unique methods that help them craft superior films. And the good news is, because PIXAR began as an outsider company, many of these methods are well within reach of the indie filmmaker. Here are a few new tricks from the old toys…

Perturbate the Model

While a single writer/director is usually the prime creative force behind each PIXAR film, all of the films are regularly subjected to “brutally honest” critiques while in development from a group known as the Brain Trust. The original members of the Brain Trust were Lasseter, Pete Docter (Up, Andrew Stanton (Finding Nemo, Wall-E) and the late Joe Ranft. The group now reportedly includes other directors and creatives like Brad Bird (The Incredibles, Lee Unkrich (Toy Story 3) and Brenda Chapman (The Prince of Egypt). As you can see, the story must withstand scrutiny from a collective with a massive movie IQ.

Finance wizards have an expression: to perturbate the model. They test how models of markets would react in this or that extreme situation. The creative wizards at PIXAR do exactly the same thing. Before they ever start animating a story, it has been rigorously tested. Does this or that plot point make sense? What are the characters’ goals? Is this unique and original? While the ultimate creative decisions rest with the filmmaker, the ones that survive the perturbations from PIXAR’s Brain Trust ultimately result in a stronger story.

But what can an isolated filmmaker do without access to the PIXAR Brain Trust? Start your own. Regularly focus-testing projects with other filmmakers whose opinion you respect is invaluable and now, thanks to social networking, simple to do. Go to some local film festivals or filmmaker events meet other filmmakers and start your own Brain Trust.

Be Willing to Set Projects Aside

If you put years of your life into developing a project, but it just wasn’t ready, would you be willing to put it aside? Walt Disney did this — many times. As someone with the privilege of going through Disney’s archives, I’ve had a chance to see many projects that were delayed or never came to fruition. Disney often resisted commercial pressure to rush a film into production, and guess who else has this habit? John Lasseter, Disney worshipper.

“I’ve got Disney blood running through my veins,” he has been quoted as saying. “I do what I do because of Walt Disney.” [The Sunday Times October 2009] Even before PIXAR had a track record, he threw out the original story for Toy Story and started again from scratch, even though doing so jeopardized a deal with the Disney Studio to help release it. We know from our perch in the present that it all worked out, but at that time, the pressure must have been enormous.

Following Walt Disney’s lead, Lasseter and other executives at PIXAR have taken steps to make such a hard call a easier. They keep a lot of projects in development. This is expensive, but it means they get a choice of projects when the production pipeline is ready.

Most successful indie filmmakers do something similar, if on a smaller scale. They “keep irons in the fire” and are “willing to kill their babies” if it serves the ultimate creative goal: making a great movie.

Play in the Sandbox

When bestselling business authors Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson analyzed the corporate culture of PIXAR, they observed a childlike sense of fun in every aspect of the company. One of the keys is the way collaboration is used to constantly “plus” projects. PIXAR employees build on each others’ ideas like kids working to build a massive sandcastle.

Their takeaway: “Innovation does not come from a miraculous revelation … it comes from habitual, nonstop collaboration.” As PIXAR employees eat breakfast cereal (provided free), they can sit around like kids at the breakfast table and bounce ideas off one another. Then they can adjourn to a secret room with a hidden door that opens by pressing a button under a statue (I’m not making this up) as they continue to work on it.

As a filmmaker, you have to feel free to experiment, unleash the imagination that was so strong in childhood. I’m not saying a bowl of Frosted Flakes is the best way to do that. But whatever sort of environment is a creative sandbox for you, make it happen.

There are plenty more PIXAR methods that deserve to be cloned by filmmakers, but I’ll leave it here for now. See you in the sandbox!

John Ott is a writer, filmmaker and founder of the website Making the Movie

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Orange Leaders Embrace Innovate the Pixar Way

Excerpts from the What is Orange blog…How do you emphasize MILESTONES?

Posted on http://www.whatisorange.org   5/5/11 by Bre Hallberg

Milestones come and go whether we’re prepared for them or not. So, why not spend a little bit of time planning for those moments in life AND preparing the parents of the kids in your ministry for the milestones that they’re going to encounter?

This month we’ll be discussing how church leaders can better partner with parents to become more actively involved in key events that mark milestones in their kids’ lives. And on a personal note, we’re going to be talking about how to make the little stuff in life count, and be intentional about celebrating even the smallest milestones.

We know that you lead in several ways at any given time. You lead yourself, you lead volunteers, you might lead a staff, and you often lead up. So, here’s what we have in store for you to accomplish each of these tasks:

PERSONAL LEADERSHIP DEVELOPMENT
How does this happen every single week? Sunday just won’t slow down. But don’t allow that to interfere with the investment you make in yourself as a leader. Go ahead and grab your number two pencil to mark some personal time each week this month to invest in your own leadership development—20 minutes should do it. We’ve already got a plan for you, so making the time is the first step to accomplishing it.

BOOK REVIEW:
Innovate the Pixar Way by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson
Pixar isn’t exactly known for “little things,” but they certainly ARE known for their creativity. And one of the keys to this creativity is finding unique ways to celebrate the workplace— making even small details a big deal. Capodagli and Jackson share this unusual approach with readers so that you can also celebrate and create in your own work environment.

REAL LIFE:
Pixar
Back to the big screen! We’re going to be taking a very practical look at how Pixar celebrates, brainstorms and creates. Check out the details behind their work environment and staff culture that make this company so unique. Then, discover how you can apply those to your ministry environment.

About Orange Leaders

It’s a gathering of leaders who are passionate about engaging churches and families to influence the faith and character of the next generation. They focus their web content around the concept of Orange. 

Orange is a secondary color, created when you combine two primary colors—red and yellow.

Orange is what red and yellow can do when they combine efforts. If you paint only with red, you will get what only red can do. If you paint only with yellow, you will get what only yellow can do. But when you paint with red and yellow, you’ll get new possibilities, fresh solutions and vibrant outcomes.

They believe the warm heart of the family can be represented by the color red, and the bright light of the church can be represented by the color yellow. When these two entities combine their efforts for the sake of the spiritual growth of the next generation, the result is Orange.

EBSCO Reviews Innovate the Pixar Way

Today, many American companies are highly risk averse and are taking a short-term view of business. Greater focus on innovation is needed to make companies more competitive. In Innovate the Pixar Way, Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson discuss how leaders at animation giant Pixar have cultivated an innovative culture. They identify numerous ways that organizations can create their own “innovation playgrounds.” While researching the sources of Pixar’s innovative genius, the authors examined the company’s culture, leadership, teaming, and training. Organizations that are both innovative and profitable require a delicate balance between two very different characteristics: 1) childlike dreaming and 2) task-driven execution. Pixar has been successful at achieving this balance.

EBSCO Publishing is an experienced information solution provider and the largest aggregator of journals and periodicals in the world. In addition to providing resources to support the complete information technology needs of the world’s largest corporations and government agencies, EBSCO is:

• One of the 200 largest private companies in the United States, as reported by Forbes
• A chief resource used in the top twelve ranked MBA programs, as reported by Financial Times
• A leader in providing outstanding information technology solutions for the world’s most-recognized companies and industry leaders for more than 60 years

With a combination of creative editorial, technical, and business skills and operations, EBSCO Publishing provides an outstanding collection of resources. This includes proprietary content, as well as book summaries and reports for learning professionals with selected articles from top magazine and journal publishers.

The Justify Blog Review of Innovate the Pixar Way

It’s been a while since we’ve talked book reviews, but we finished reading “Innovate the Pixar Way” by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson this weekend. To summarize in a few points as possible:

• The book was pretty light on the history of Pixar
• The artwork, pull-quote text and some chapters come across almost condescending, but mostly it sounds like they’re trying too hard.

The whole premise of the book when I picked it up was to get an inside look at Pixar Animation Studios, to really have in-depth interviews with their staff or past employees. It wasn’t so much that as it was a compilation of quotes and tidbits compiled from other video and text interviews conducted with key staff over the years. And while it wasn’t the job of this book to run you through the whole history of Pixar, the amount of text supplied to educate the reader on Pixar could be picked up from Wikipedia.

To be honest, I didn’t like this book. It read very vaguely with whispy high-flying ideas on how to innovate and be creative by having fun at work and letting employees be creative with their office space and not getting tied up in your failures. All good ideas, but not practical if your business has less than a few million in the bank.

One good takeaway was a look at Disney and Walt Disney himself, alongside Ed Catmull and Jon Lasseter of Pixar. The concept of scrapping work that was merely “good enough” to take advantage of “great work” is valid, important and arguably the most important lesson of the book. The authors give good examples, accounts and stories to further this concept well.

In all, a pretty light book on Pixar from a detail standpoint; there’s nothing new to be read here that can’t be surmised from articles, videos and interviews already on the Internet.

 

Bill and Lynn say, “He’s right about the book being ‘pretty light on the history of Pixar.’  (If you want to read a book about Pixar’s history, pick up droidMAKER or The Pixar Touch.)  He’s wrong about needing ‘a few million in the bank’ to practice the principles.  In the early days of Pixar, they were operating in the red and STILL found ways to jazz up their offices, keep team spirit soaring, and encourage fun in the workplace. Lastly, the purpose of this book was not to provide a Pixar cookie cutter approach to developing an innovative culture, but rather to spark one’s imagination for producing a dream, believe, dare, do culture that is right for each reader’s organization. As Bill says in his keynote presentations, ‘Innovate, don’t Imitate.  It’s hard work.  There’s no instant pudding.’”

Business 901 Review of Innovate the Pixar Way

The past few weeks I have been heavily immersed into Kaizen, Kanban, Agile Project Development and as a result Scrum. I have found it quite interesting but somewhat overwhelming along with a few other things I am doing. I have taxed my learning absorption level to say the least.

What did I do? I took a little time off and sat back with a good book and a little Jackson Browne(Just like Bach to me). The book; Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons from the World’s Most Creative Corporate Playground. It was written by Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson, the pair that wrote The Disney Way, Harnessing the Management Secrets of Disney in Your Company.

It wasn’t long into the book that they discussed stories and development that my mind drifted to agile and scrum comparisons. What they really brought home was the importance of collaboration and building a team. They even discussed the great lengths they go to hire people who are interested in working in a “network” type environment in solving problems, building and supporting each other. Here is a short excerpt from the book; the definitions of a set of proficiencies by Bill Nelson of Pixar:

Depth – demonstrating mastery in a subject or a principal skill; having the discipline to chase dreams all the way to the finish line.

Breadth – possessing a vast array of experiences and interests having empathy for others; having the ability to explore insights from many different perspectives; and being able to effectively generate new ideas by collaborating with the entire team.

Communications – focusing on the receiver; receiving feedback to ascertain whether the message sent was truly understood. Realizing only the receiver can say, “I understand!”

Collaboration – bringing together the skills(depth, breadth, and communications), ideas, and personality styles of an entire team to achieve a shared vision. Fostering an attitude to say, “Yes, and…”, rather than “No, this is better.”

Collaboration is critical to the process of generating ideas and problems in any organization. When you review the principles of Kaizen and Agile, your ability to succeed really comes down to how good of a team you put together. Very few times in an initial read of a book, I started reading this for pleasure, have I never stopped so soon in a book and reread an entire chapter.

The rest of the book proved to be just as valuable and I think the authors did a very nice job of displaying the brilliance and the imagination that is taking place at Pixar. I encourage you to read the book before you put together your next team.

Business 901 provides practical, information-rich, immediately applicable direction that profoundly impacts the success of small and mid-sized businesses. We have designed our services and product offerings so that they are implementable systems that work in the real, not enough time, not enough people world we operate in. Tools that simplify the marketing process, not complicate it.

SALESFORCEXP FEATURES INNOVATE THE PIXAR WAY

To Infinity and Beyond

Pixar-inspired innovation can make your meetings a hit

By Staff

As published in: SalesForceXP - November-December 2010

In their book Innovate the Pixar Way: Business Lessons From the World's Most Creative Corporate Playground (McGraw-Hill, 2010), authors Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson latch on to Pixar Studios' commitment to excellence through imagination.

"It makes no difference if you are making a movie that takes four years or serving a customer that takes four minutes, you have only one chance to deliver that magical, magnetic, enchanting experience for your customer," the authors state.

Because a company's creativity begins during planning sessions, here are three ideas from Capodagli and Jackson that will help your team improve its innovative process during team meetings:

1. Take field trips. Some may be related to particular projects you're working on, while others will feel completely disconnected. In preparation for the animated feature "Cars," Pixar Chief Creative Officer John Lasseter and 11 animators rented white Cadillacs and traveled Route 66. To obtain ideas for designing the "Cars" movie characters, Lasseter visited the actual design studios of several automotive companies.

2. Bring in an outside guest speaker. Have your team spend an afternoon learning how to cultivate bonsai trees, or how to prepare an Italian dinner, or how to make classical music relevant to today's youth. The key is to get the team to expand their thinking outside their normal comfort thinking zone.

3. Conduct quarterly "Gong Shows." Years ago, the Disney organization had something called the "Gong Show," which was patterned after the old TV game show and provided an opportunity for anyone in the company to pitch new film ideas.

Innovate the Pixar Way: Review of a New Book on Developing An Innovative Culture

Innovate The Pixar Way – Business Lessons from the World’s Most Creative Corporate Playground offers inspiration to any leader who is seeking to make her organisation more creative and innovative. Pixar is, of course, the animation powerhouse whose creations include Toy Story, Finding Nemo and The Incredibles.

The values and principles that underpin an ‘innovation culture’ have been described in many books and academic papers. Innovate The Pixar Way reminds us of many of them including: Taking a long term view, creating a learning culture, not letting hierarchy get in the way, creating high performing creative teams, encouraging risk taking and learning from failure rather than punishing it.

Notwithstanding that this is well-trodden territory, Innovate The Pixar Way is a stimulating read which brings a fresh perspective to the topic of developing an innovation culture.
There is detail enough to guide those who are looking to bring about significant cultural change within an organisation. It might also serve as a useful reference for those already in the process of cultural change and looking for additional reassurance that their strategy will pay off.
This is Bill Capodagli and Lynn Jackson’s second collaboration. Their first book The Disney Way (McGraw-Hill 1999, fully revised and updated in 2006) dissected the Disney strategy of Dream, Believe, Dare, Do.

Innovate The Pixar Way holds a tight focus on its subject. The result is that we are presented with a fairly detailed picture of a ‘model innovative company’. We also get to see just how the elements that make up an innovation culture interact together to deliver great creative products, engaged employees and excellent financial returns.

Turn The Workplace Into A 'Playground'

The authors’ key thesis focuses on the opportunity to turn a place of work into a ‘playground’. By doing this, as Pixar have done, they suggest that a company can unleash the creative potential of all employees.

To the cynical corporate leader a ‘playground’ might sound like a place where no one does anything useful, and no one makes any money. However, Pixar’s esteemed reputation in the film industry and its financial results over the last fifteen years, quickly put pay to such criticism.
Indeed, while many academics and corporate leaders debate the need for companies to increase workforce productivity and in particular to ‘harness discretionary effort,’ Pixar has already found ways to do these things and is reaping the benefits.

This is a future orientated book that shows us how if we want to get more out of people; more creativity and higher morale; we have to allow those people to bring more of themselves to work. Not just the thinking, compliant, focused and analytical side, but also their playful, imaginative and passionate sides.

Companies need this ‘well rounded’ workforce because, as the authors warn, we are now in an age of ‘rapid innovation’. Companies need teams that can journey fearlessly into the unknown to create products and services that will fulfil their customers’ dreams.
Business as 'Show Business.'

A second key insight in the book suggests using the metaphor of ‘putting on a show’ as a way to run a business. Better still, how about viewing your business – whatever business it is - through the eyes of a (movie) director? Movie directors have led us to expect nothing less than excitement, inspiration and beautiful visuals in films. By taking such an approach in other businesses, leaders could ‘raise the bar.’ “Every business is show business,’’ we are told. And “you only have one chance to deliver that magical, magnetic, enchanting experience to your customer.’

Delivering An Innovation Culture.

The book is full of details about how Pixar does deliver on the key aspects of an innovation culture. The ‘campus’ has been designed to encourage interaction. There are plenty of places to ‘play’ including volleyball courts and a swimming pool. Individuals have the freedom to demonstrate their creativity by personalising their own workspaces,and employees have the freedom to approach anybody without recourse to hierarchical patterns. This means that we see Pixar as a living and breathing innovative organisation rather than the conceptual ideal of same that has been portrayed in other books.

Unfortunately when we come to the challenges that Pixar may have faced over the years there is perhaps not quite enough detail. At one stage Pixar Director Pete Docter is quoted saying “all our films are failures at some point.” I would like to have heard more about this stage - when the films are still in development, still needing to be perfected and crafted. What specifically do the leaders at Pixar do to maintain morale? Also, how does the “long term culture” hold up when the teams come under acute short term pressures?

Nevertheless, I am convinced that the strong values of the Pixar company, the mutual respect and trust for each other and focus on quality, must stand the business in good stead to avoid the type of day to day skirmishes that undermine team working and productivity on a daily basis in many organisations. The consistent message is that by creating the right innovation environment you end up with an energised and enthusiastic workforce who care and want to solve problems and contribute.

I was glad to see that there was at least some consideration of the topic of measuring innovation performance. Admittedly this is quite brief. Having identified the fundamentals of an innovation culture, the authors, not surprisingly are keen to point out how much of the critical aspects of an innovation culture are in fact intangible and very difficult to measure.

This view is presented alongside summarised revenues and costs for the last ten or so Pixar movies. Indeed these particular ‘innovation measures’ are impressive.
Again there is little guidance for the leader who needs to continue to champion his strategy to build an innovation culture, who is not seeing strong financial returns as quickly as Pixar did, and who perhaps is starting to feel some resistance to the strategy from higher-ups and shareholders.

The final stage of the book includes 16 pointers to create your own corporate playground. My favourite of which was “work on cool projects.“ This points to encouraging the right attitude among teams so that they can reframe any project in such a way that it excites and inspires them.

Another favourite pointer ‘dreamers with deadlines’ reminds us that innovation culture is not just about blue sky thinking. Delivering innovation results on time is also critical.

The Other Corporate 'Playgrounds'

So is Pixar the only place that could be described as a corporate playground? An appendix provides details of six other companies that similarly strive to innovate continuously and to unleash the creative potential of their people. These include Google and Nike.

Readers of books about innovation and creativity probably have even higher expectations of getting a fresh perspective on their topic than readers of some other categories, and Innovate The Pixar Way does indeed stimulate and inspire. The metaphors of workplace as ‘playground’, and business as ‘show business’, are memorable and relevant to the 21st century.
Even if readers are not ready to commit to these strategies on behalf of their organisation, having read about their context in Innovate The Pixar Way, some may want to bear them in mind as possible questions on an innovation audit. Are we creating magic for customers? Do our people get the chance to be playful?

Sceptics may feel that when it comes to workplace culture, it’s different in the ‘creative industries’. While Pixar may not be a wholly transferable model of an innovation culture, the authors are keen to point out they are not portraying it as such. They make it clear that a company has to develop its own creative culture. However, I cannot imagine any company that could not, at the very least, learn a thing or two from Pixar.

http://www.anatelloglobal.com - based in England; growth and innovation consultancy has helped large organisations around the world, many of them FTSE 100 or Fortune 500 companies, to innovate and achieve profitable, organic and sustainable growth