Stanford Graduate School of Business
9 HN recommenders · recommended in 13 months, 2010–2017
54:11 · 217K views · Jul 28, 2009
Ed Catmull of Pixar speaks at Stanford's 2007 Entrepreneurship Conference on running a creative company. He argues for surfacing small problems early and building good teams, with stories like the Toy Story 2 crunch.
Repeatedly called one of the most useful talks on building organizations and managing creative teams.
14 comments from Hacker News
It's "The Pixar Story"[1]. A great documentary, highly recommended. But Pixar wasn't all roses either - during the tight production of Toy Story 2 (because they changed almost all of the story and had to rush it for christmas), a couple (who were both animators) forgot that their 1-year old was in the car (and not in the day care!), and the girl was there for almost 10 hours... She lived, but still a pretty horrible story. The source for this unpleasant anecdote is [2]. It's a long talk by Ed Catmull, but I can't recommend it enough. It's really, really awesome . Success hides problems (Ed Catmull) Want to know why Pixar was awesome for soooo long? It wasn't luck, and it wasn't because they had great animators. It wasn't even (entirely) because they told terrific stories. It was because they constantly learned from their "successes"... Watch (or listen) to Catmull's talk. I guarantee that you won't regret the 55 minutes you spend on it... [1]: [LINK] [2]: this video
I believe Ed Catmull refers to this as 'keeping your crises small.' That is to say, it's much better to actively surface problems before they leave the shop than it is to ship with issues, and try to deal with implosions after the fact (ahem, Vista). Here he is, giving a really good talk at Stanford Business School, in which he covers this (among other good ideas). About an hour, but worth much more. this video Interestingly, an ethos like this suggests that the fate of Microsoft is NOT inevitable. It's only becomes that way when you no longer care about shipping garbage. Exhibit B: Detroit in the 70's and 80's.
fantastic business talk by Ed Catmull (pixar co-founder) at Stanford this video btw: I find it hard to believe that Toy Story 3 could be any good (because of the "3"). Is it?
Rich Hickey's talk on simplicity is a must watch. [LINK] And one of the most useful talks of all time for building organizations is by Ed Catmull (of Pixar) this video
Keep Your Crises Small, this video It's a lecture from Ed Catmull. I highly recommend it, many gems from a brilliant developer turned brilliant manager.