It took 20 years for Pixar Animation Studios to find the technology and talent necessary to make the vision of its founders a reality in the incredible 1995 hit, Toy Story.
Every four/five years since, a team of 250 creatives has produced box office success after success. The studio has only ever lost money on one film – 2015’s The Good Dinosaur (which, out of interest, released less than six months after the company’s second biggest film ever, Inside Out). It’s a remarkable feat, unparalleled in the industry.
So how do they do it?
By placing communal creativity above independent genius.
Where Story is King is Pixar’s motto, and unlike much of the competition, the company has gone to great endeavours to make this phrase a reality. Where the word of the HIPPO – the HIghest Paid Person in the Office – might mark the final say on creative feedback at other studios, Pixar have established a ‘safe zone’ in which the ideas of all employees are valued equally. If the advice is judged to serve the film’s ability to tell a better story, it’s taken on board. This may seem like the kind of concept that doesn’t work in reality, but it made such a radical difference at Pixar, that the process has been adopted by Disney.
Of course, managers and executives still have an important role to play, and they too harness the power of group communication through a concept they call ‘Braintrust’. It all started when Toy Story director John Lasseter realised he was constantly calling on four particular colleagues for guidance. “He found himself surrounded by this group that was funny, focused and really driven and passionate about the film itself,” explains Pixar co-founder Ed Catmull to an audience at a Stanford Entrepreneurship Corner event in 2014. “They would have these intense discussions, but it never got personal.”
Soon more and more of Lasseter’s peers, including Catmull, joined the Braintrust, each coming and going as their experience was required.
The company tried to incorporate the idea into film departments, but found that it only ended up pitting groups of employees against their superiors, who would have to arrive at a meeting adamantly prepared to defend their ideas.
This resulted in confirmation bias, deconstructive arguments, and the quelling of one of the key elements in Pixar’s guide to success: vulnerability. Ego is seen as the company’s nemesis, and those who can’t remove their ego from the creative process quickly see themselves removed from a job.
Pixar understands that being vulnerable takes courage. It means taking risks again and again, and embracing imperfection as a means of understanding the problem’s with one’s own work. It means working from the heart, not the head, and if there’s one thing Pixar films are loved for across the world, it’s their big heart.
It’s not just internally that the company fosters communal creativity. When Catmull was a student, he promoted the value of sharing of open-source software with his peers in computer engineering, and it’s a value he still holds onto today.
As Pixar worked towards developing a system through which they could produce their first animated feature, the team documented and shared its findings with the idea of helping the industry progress as a whole. “The rationale was also if we publish everything we are more likely to attract the best people. And we did. We began to accumulate people who were good not only because they shared our vision, but because they liked the idea of sharing what they were doing. We were able to create a bigger community that’s still growing.”
The Pixar Research Group continues to publish its work to this day.
Catmull and Lasseter – who is now Chief Creative Officer for the company – brought these ideas to Disney’s animation department a decade ago, when the corporation bought Pixar for a reported $7.4 billion. With these systems in place, they’ve helped turn the struggling studio around, resulting in major hits such as Frozen and Zootopia.
Ultimately, none of this would be feasible if Pixar didn’t have the right team.
Fortunately, with incredible talent including director Pete Docter, producer Darla K. Anderson, and the omni-brilliant Andrew Stanton all working together, this is never likely to be a major problem for the company.
For more of Ed Catmull’s experiences at Pixar Animation Studios, you can buy his book Creativity Inc. on Amazon.