Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

Our job as managers in creative environments is to protect new ideas from those who don’t understand that in order for greatness to emerge, there must be phases of not-so-greatness. Protect the future, not the past.

• 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 come up with something better. If you get the team right, chances are that they’ll get the ideas right.

Steve telling him once that he hoped in his next life he would come back as a Pixar director. I have no doubt that if he did, he’d be one of the best.

Steve is not commonly described as a storyteller, and he was always careful to say he didn’t know the first thing about filmmaking. Yet part of his bond with our directors stemmed from the fact that he knew how important it was to construct a story that connected with people.

Second, this was an idea championed by those at the highest levels of the company.

As Joe Ranft said at the time, “Better to have train wrecks with miniature trains than with real ones.”

Cavallo Point, a former army base–turned–conference center in Sausalito, just across the Golden Gate Bridge from San Francisco.

Finally, we have learned that shorts are a relatively inexpensive way to screw up.

Craft is what we are expected to know; art is the unexpected use of our craft.