内容简介

Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation Studios—into the story meetings, the postmortems, and the “Braintrust” sessions where art is born. It is, at heart, a book about how to build and sustain a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.”

For nearly twenty years, Pixar has dominated the world of animation, producing such beloved films as the Toy Story trilogy, Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Up, and WALL-E, which have gone on to set box-office records and garner twenty-seven Academy Awards. The joyousness of the storytelling, the inventive plots, the emotional authenticity: In some ways, Pixar movies are an object lesson in what creativity really is. Now, in this book, Catmull reveals the ideals and techniques, honed over years, that have made Pixar so widely admired—and so profitable.

As a young man, Catmull had a dream: to make the world’s first computer-animated movie. He nurtured that dream first as a Ph.D. student at the University of Utah, where many computer science pioneers got their start, and then forged an early partnership with George Lucas that 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. The essential ingredient in that movie’s success—and in the thirteen movies that followed, all of which debuted at #1 at the box office—was the unique environment that Catmull and his colleagues built at Pixar, based on philosophies that protect the creative process and ideas that defy convention, such as:

• Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. But give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or come up with something better.

• If you don’t strive to uncover what is unseen and understand its nature, you will be ill prepared to lead.

• It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It’s the manager’s job to make it safe for others to take them.

• The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them.

• A company’s communication structure should not mirror its organizational structure. Everybody should be able to talk to anybody.

• Do not assume that general agreement will lead to change—it takes substantial energy to move a group, even when all are on board.

Advance praise for Creativity, Inc.

“Many have attempted to formulate and categorize inspiration and creativity. What Ed Catmull shares instead is his astute experience that creativity isn’t strictly a well of ideas but an alchemy of people. In Creativity, Inc., Ed reveals, with commonsense specificity and honesty, examples of how not to get in your own way and realize a creative coalescence of art, business, and innovation.”—George Lucas

作品目录

作者简介

Ed Catmull is co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios and president of both Pixar and Walt Disney Animation Studios. He has been honored with five Academy Awards, including the Gordon E. Sawyer Award for lifetime achievement in the field of computer graphics. He earned a B.S. degrees in computer science and physics and a Ph.D. in computer science from the University of Utah. He l...

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精彩摘录

Threeweeksbefore,John(Lasseter)hadvisitedSteveforthelasttime."Wesatforaboutanhourtalkingaboutcomingprojectshewasinterestedin.IlookedathimandIrealizedthismanhadgivenme-givenus-everythingthatwecouldeverwant.Igavehimabighug.Ikissedhimonthecheekandforallofyou"-Johnwascryingnow-"Isaid,'Thankyou.Iloveyou,Steve.'"

——引自第314页

摩擦在所难免。毋庸置疑，每位导演都想要听到别人对自己作品的溢美之词。但由于智囊团的特殊运作方式，导演如果听到自己的影片瑕疵众多或是修改在所难免这样的评价，也丝毫不会觉得灰心丧气。没有人会摆官架子，也没有人会对导演们下命令，因此导演们很少会产生抵触心理。大家所审视的对象是电影本身，而不是电影的制作者。有一点非常关键，却又常常被人忽视：你本人并不等同于你的创意。如果你不与你的创意拉开一些距离，那么别人一旦质疑你的创意，你就会觉得自己受到了冒犯。要建立一个畅通无阻的反馈系统，我们必须将权力从中剔除掉。换言之，必须关注问题本身，而不要将矛头指向人。

——引自第94页