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Interview - McKinsey Quarterly
Staying one step ahead at Pixar:
An interview with Ed Catmull
Interview - McKinsey Quarterly
Innovation lessons from Pixar:
An interview with Oscar-winning
director Brad Bird
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“
Get hoeing
Passive-aggressive people—people who don’t show their colors in the group but then get behind the scenes and peck away—are poisonous. I can usually spot those people fairly soon and I weed them out.”
“
Watch the mood
If you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value.
If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value.”
“
Drop your drawers
I want you guys to speak up and drop your drawers. We’re going to look at your scenes in front of everybody. Everyone will get [critiqued and] humiliated and encouraged together.”
“
Get scared
[If you’ve] had nothing but success, what
do you do with it? You don’t play it safe—
you do something that scares you, that’s
at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail.”
Interview - McKinsey Quarterly
Innovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird
Dive deeper
Dive deeper
Team dynamics are decisive when it comes to avoiding inertia and complacency. Here are four
tips from Brad Bird’s approach at Pixar.
Be like Bird
Interview - McKinsey Quarterly
Innovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird
Dive deeper
Dive deeper
Bird quickly recruited the company’s “malcontents.”
Get thermal
Interview - McKinsey Quarterly
Innovation lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird
Dive deeper
Dive deeper
To avoid that same trap after Toy Story and other big hits, Pixar brought in Brad Bird, the “born rebel” who helped develop The Simpsons.
Challenge convention
Interview - McKinsey Quarterly
Staying one step ahead at Pixar: An interview with Ed Catmull
Dive deeper
Dive deeper
In the late ’90s, Disney made four big animated hits—The Little Mermaid, Beauty and the Beast, Aladdin, and The Lion King. But continued success proved elusive.
Off the cliff
A quick briefing in five—
or a fifty-minute deeper dive
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Want to avoid the complacency that
so often follows success? Take lessons from Pixar’s high-morale collection of subversives and malcontents.
Shake it up
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