Creativity Inc Chapter 1 Summary

Helena Ho

BUS3 189 Section 09

Creativity Inc. Book Chapter Review The book Creativity Inc. by Amy Wallace and Ed Catmull is about how Pixar came to be one of the biggest animation studios in the world. Ed Catmull, the author, and co-founder of Pixar retell his experience and story; he also explains how Pixar was the leading pioneer company in computer animation. The most important aspect of this book is how Catmull learns and explains how he manages each process and step of becoming what he thinks is a great and successful leader in order to thrive and become a successful company. At the beginning of the book, the introduction touches on what Pixar the company looks like today. Ed in this section stresses the importance of self-expression

In this chapter, we get to read about Ed's new progress towards Pixar and after many failures of pitching ideas to other companies, in the end, someone saw potential in him and invested in him. A multimillionaire, Alex, fully trusted Ed and gave him the position at the New York Institute of Technology to fulfill his ideas and make his own team to lead. Ed interviewed many people, and there were others who had a better experience and better education than him, although that wavered him, he hired them anyway. Although he believed that one way they could be the ones taking his job, he put away his insecurities and hired the most talented people he thought were qualified. Ed ended up hiring people who were only smarter and more qualified than he was and because of that, he learned that the payoff was much higher than going for the safe which he thought was safe for himself. Because of this policy he created for himself he gets to work with people who are committed to their vision and ideas; connecting with these types of people he found was a very valuable aspect of innovation and creativity. Despite the initial failure of pitching their ideas to Disney, they found another breakthrough that might fuel their ideas of mixing computer animation into film with Star Wars. Due to Star Wars' success, made an opening for Ed and his people. Lucasfilms ends up interviewing Ed and asks for his recommendation for people qualified for this idea and he names the people he worked with. Later on, he realized that his colleagues were also interviewed and did the same thing he did, they ended up moving to the new headquarters and started their new days at Lucasfilms. About a few years later the Pixar Image Computer was created and the company name Pixar was born. Ed and the people at Lucasfilms ran into some conflict. The people at Lucasfilm were unwilling to use the new innovation and