The Best of Ed Catmull

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

"If something works, you shouldn't do it again. We want to do something that is new, original—something where there's a good chance of failure [each time]."

If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they’ll screw it up." he says. "But if you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they’ll make it work."

“If you aren’t experiencing failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it.”

Our philosophy is: You get great creative people, you bet big on them, you give them enormous leeway and support, and you provide them with an environment in which they can get honest feedback from everyone.

So for the next couple of years I made a habit, when giving talks, of posing the question to my audience: Which is more valuable, good ideas or good people? When I asked for a show of hands, the audiences would be split 50–50.

People think so little about this that, in all these years, only one person in the audience has ever pointed out the false ... See more