Creativity, Inc.
Creativity, Inc. is a book for managers who want to lead their employees to new heights, a manual for anyone who strives for originality, and the first-ever, all-access trip into the nerve center of Pixar Animation—into the meetings, postmortems, and “Braintrust” sessions where some of the most successful films in history are made. It is, at heart, a book about how to build a creative culture—but it is also, as Pixar co-founder and president Ed Catmull writes, “an expression of the ideas that I believe make the best in us possible.”
Stats for nerds
83recommend
164mentions
130people
2014–2026years
67% recommend30% neutral2% critical
Mentions per year
What Hacker News says
- Creativity, Inc.
It taught me to not limit my imagination and to think of creativity as a way of approaching problems rather than something limited to art. As a developer, it genuinely changed the way I think about building things.
- My takeaway: get people to independently create an artifact representing their priorities, share the results, discuss the differences, come to a consensus informed by everyone's insights.
Whatever artifact makes sense. Maybe a spreadsheet list. Maybe a one page, or half page, serious coherent characterization from each person.
How people independently see priorities before collective discussion, being as important as how they rate them, I would go with one page thoughtful summaries.
Having experienced partially-aligned organizations, I would want key contributors to a discussion like this to come from every major part of an organization. Emphasis on very different roles, especially important leaf roles, not just top leaders. Otherwise you get high bubble-at-the-top alignment. Top-only strong alignment is like concrete, perniciously inflexible. Which is what I experienced. End-to-end insight and discovery of alignment is needed to get adaptable, in-touch, actually effective alignment.
And as is hammered so well in "Creativity, Inc" by Ed Catmull, alignment isn't just about coordinating efforts. It is about continuously identifying and removing friction, of any kind, anywhere, for anyone, as individuals make their very different contributions in service to the common direction.
- Off topic, but I assume the name braintrust comes from Creativity, Inc. Amazing book by Pixar co-founder Edwin Catmull.
- I'm not a SWE, but I will say often when these types of posts come up, people throw in "work on your management/people skills!" - even if you never manage, interpersonal skills in the work place can be just as useful as any hard skills. Here are three books I recommend:
https://www.amazon.com/Five-Dysfunctions-Team-Leadership-Fab...
https://www.amazon.com/Creativity-Inc-Overcoming-Unseen-Insp...
https://www.amazon.com/Managing-Yourself-Measure-Clayton-Chr...
Good luck on your journey, the fact that you're even asking these things is a great sign. :)
- Listening to our podcast episodes on Business Books & Co. won't quite get you as much as reading the actual books, but it will follow a sort of 80/20 rule in that I think our episodes cover 80% of the major points in each book. Here are the episodes we've done on books in that list based on the categories the author ascribed:
Product, Design & Marketing
- S4E2 The Lean Startup by Eric Ries https://pnc.st/s/business-books/5d9f9531/the-lean-startup
Organisational Behaviour, Management & Communication
- S1E1 High Output Management by Andy Grove https://pnc.st/s/business-books/095f226633d34496/high-output...
- S3E4 The Hard Thing About Hard Things by Ben Horowitz https://pnc.st/s/business-books/1067de4d/the-hard-thing-abou...
- S3E7 Never Split The Difference by Chris Voss (author interview) https://pnc.st/s/business-books/920fe358/never-split-the-dif...
Creativity & Getting Stuff Done
- S2E2 Creativity, Inc: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration by Ed Catmull https://pnc.st/s/business-books/6e3f927715094617/creativity-...
We also have 30+ more episodes... many are book summaries/discussions but about 1/3 of recent episodes are author interviews. You can find all of our content for free on your podcast player of choice here: https://pnc.st/s/business-books
- - https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/45303387-an-elegant-puzz... - An Elegant Puzzle: Systems of Engineering Management by Will Larson - excellent intro into the job of an Engineering Manager
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/23848190-extreme-ownersh... - Extreme Ownership by Jocko Willink, Leif Babin - showcase of leadership techniques (with references from US Navy)
- https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/18077903-creativity-inc - Creativity, Inc. by Ed Catmull, Amy Wallace - explains how to create a working environment that drives creativity and
