Creativity Inc

06 January 2015 Unknown 0 Comments

Welcome to the new year.

I thought I'd start off the year with a series of posts about Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull. This is one of the greatest books I've read about managing people in a creative endeavor.

I know lots of people have written about this book, but its ideas are so foundational or at least parallel to what we are exploring here that we have to talk about it as well. It will be fun though, because it's a great book.

I've always felt that this blog has been more of a collaborative analysis than just me speaking to 1 reader, so hopefully we can continue this collaboration and get a really good conversation going about what Ed Catmull brings to the table.

I'll also be referencing lots of things that others have said about this book. Here are links to some of the places I've heard conversations about this book:

http://5by5.tv/criticalpath/119
http://5by5.tv/criticalpath/120
http://www.esn.fm/electricshadow/14?rq=creativity%20Inc
http://www.theincomparable.com/theincomparable/197/

Let's start this conversations with a caveat about the book. It's not just for creative people or creative companies. Some will argue that all work is creative work, but also Horace Dediu says that engineers have the same struggles as the artists at Pixar.

He goes further to say that Apple and Pixar are trying to solve the same problems. He even says that this is the best book ever written about Apple. That statement is fascinating to me. We'll have to explore that tangent more in the future, especially his question about how much did Steve Jobs influence Pixar and how much does Pixar influence Apple.

So what I'm trying to say is that this book is for anyone in a creative endeavor, not just artists, not just managers. Everyone can benefit from this breakthrough in creativity.

Next post we'll talk about candor and how important that is to the creative process, but before I wrap up, I'll add one more quote from Horace Dediu. Talking about this book, he said that Pixar doesn't have a process, they have a value system—or a priorities system—and that is the secret sauce. So let's explore their priorities to inform our exploration.