Book Review: Creativity Inc - Ed Catmull.

For this project, the book I decided to pick up was Creativity Inc by Ed Catmull, the president of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation. There were two reasons why I choose this book. 

1. I thought it would give me an insight into the creative process that goes inside both Pixar and Disney animation. 
2. I also thought it would give me an insight into the business side of both companies, how they work and how they have maintained to be two of the biggest companies in animation all around the world. To be completely honest, it fulfilled both reasons, and I was more than a little surprised.

While you read this book and with the title itself, you expect to have just advice about creativity, but it gives you so much more than that. It shows you that for your workers to be creative the environment you give to them will affect that, it’s pretty much a manual on how to inspire your workers.

“Failure isn’t a necessary evil. In fact, it isn’t evil at all. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new” -Ed Catmull.

One of my favorite quotes from Ed Catmull. Most of us always think of failures as our stopping place, we didn’t manage to succeed so now that it is. But, in reality, failure is an everyday thing, WE are the ones that need to learn from it, and we need to change how we approach what we wanted to do in the first place, it’s an opportunity to learn and to become better, but it takes a special kind of person to do so.

What’s so great about reading this book, is the fact that such a big name in the industry is the one who wrote it, with his 20-30 years of experience in building one of the most creative and inventive teams in the animation and film industry. Honestly, reading this book has given me such a big insight into the creative mind and the fact that it is not always just inventing new things, but actually creating something far better from not such a great idea.

“Do or do not. There is no try” -Ed Catmull.

The picture was taken from Audible book cover.

Important takeaways from the book and the biggest life lessons:

•       Give a mediocre idea to a great team and they will fix it or come up with a better idea, this was a thing that made me have an “eureka” moment.
•       If you want to lead, you need to uncover what it’s unseen and understand its nature. To be a great leader you need to understand the people that are working for and with you, being “book smart” is not enough, having emotional intelligence will make you a far better leader.
•       The cost of preventing errors is often far greater than the cost of fixing them.
•       A company’s communication structure it’s not the same as its organizational structure.
•       Mistakes are always made by teams, not by individuals, everyone is equally responsible.
•       Let everyone design their own workspace, it helps avoid boredom.
•       Encourage your employees to show who they are by letting them design their own workspace.
•      The responsibility of finding and fixing problems should be assigned to every employee.
•       Smart and passionate people in a room together, encourage them to be candid with one another, to identifying and solving problems.
•       Experimentation should be seen as necessary and productive, not as a waste of time.
•       To truly be creative, start things that might fail, another “eureka” moment for me, as a creative person I’ve always been scared of failing, but this inspired me to a new level.
•       We must be open to having our goals change as we learn new information, that way it won’t be necessary to have it right the first time.
•       The most creative people are willing to work in the shadow of uncertainty.
•       Creativity is more than a marathon than a spring.
•       Hire people who are smarter than you.
•       If people feel like they are not free to suggest ideas, you are the one to lose.
•       Change and uncertainty are a part of life, build the capability to recover when unexpected events occur.
•       Don’t wait for things to be perfect before you share them with others, show early and show often.
•       Be patient. Be authentic. And be consistent. The trust will come.

All these insights, life lessons, work lessons or whatever you desire to call them,

can be applied to every part in life, not just work. In the Interactive Media Industry, I 

personally feel like this might be one of the most important books to read, simply 

because of the lessons you can learn and apply inside your company and even your 

personal life. 

This is the promotional website of the book: http://www.creativityincbook.com/catmull/