Creativity Inc

📖 Why You Should Read It

Creativity, Inc. is a behind-the-scenes look at how Pixar built and sustained a culture of creativity while producing groundbreaking films. Ed Catmull, Pixar’s co-founder, shares hard-earned lessons on leading creative teams, building trust, and protecting the messy process of innovation. Whether you're leading a design team or crafting product strategy, this book offers a playbook for creating a safe, resilient environment where creative ideas can grow.

👉🏻 Key Takeaways

• Creative ideas need time, nurturing, and iteration—they rarely arrive fully formed.
• The Story Trust at Pixar created a space for candid, ego-free feedback among peers.
• Failure is not just inevitable, but essential to discovery and innovation.
• Protecting the creative process requires intentional leadership, not just good intentions.
• Candor is a gift—but must be invited, practiced, and modeled from the top.
• Safe environments are critical for people to take risks and share vulnerable ideas.
• Processes evolve—don’t let past success become a straitjacket for future creativity.
• Great leaders remove fear, not just obstacles.
• Incubation matters: “early on, all ideas are ugly”—but with care, they grow.
• Trust your people. Empower them, then get out of the way.

💬 Favorite Quotes

“Give a good idea to a mediocre team, and they will screw it up. Give a mediocre idea to a great team, and they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”

“Early on, all ideas are ugly. They are vague, unformed, and incomplete. They need time and trust to evolve.”

“You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged.”

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