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Case StudyPixar


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Pixar is best known for its impressive track record of hit family movies, including: Toy Story (1, 2, and 3), Monsters, Inc., Finding Nemo, WALL-E, and Up. Toy Story 3 is the thirteenth-highest-grossing movie of all time,i with over $1 billion in box office revenues, and the global take from Pixar feature films is in the neighborhood of over $9 billion. Pixar’s creative team members have won 210 awards, including twelve Oscars, six Golden Globes, 11 Grammys and many other honors.ii Both Pixar and its parent company, Disney, consistently rank at the top of lists of the world’s most innovative and admired companies. When George W. Buckley, former CEO of 3M, was asked by BusinessWeek to name the most innovative companies, he ranked Pixar at number one. Why? “Pixar is changing the way movies are made.”iii

What many filmgoers don’t know is that these impressive artistic achievements were made possible by Pixar’s ability to create a climate that fosters innovation. The company has worked hard to establish an environment that encourages creative breakthroughs

by shaking complacency and encouraging employees to challenge the ideas of their superiors. And these breakthroughs are not only on-screen. Pixar has also revitalized the field of animation through the development of software products that have become the industry standard in modeling, lighting, digital rendering, and production management. In 2015, Pixar released free animation video lessons aimed at K-12 students on the Khan Academy website. Pixar hopes to get young people excited about STEM topics, and cultivate the next generation of animators and creatives.

President Ed Catmull announced in 2015 that Pixar will release one original film per year and sequels every other year. This strategy will build upon the success of well-received Pixar films, and ensure strong box office turnout. In terms of original stories, a highly-anticipated film about the Mexican holiday Dia De Los Muertos, called Coco, is set for release in 2017.

Read on to discover some of Pixar’s innovation secrets, and learn how you might apply them to your organization.

Innovation Sparks Movie Magic


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The Four Innovation Capabilitiesfuturethink’s Innovation Case Studies are designed to provide insights on today’s leading innovators. Information about each of the companies we feature covers the four key innovation capabilities: Strategy, Ideas, Process, and Climate.

Set a foundation that defines innovation objectives and mobilizes your efforts. The notion of “serendipitous innovation” is dangerously outdated. The secret to success lies in crafting an action-oriented strategy. It means setting a vision for your company to follow and viewing innovation as an expected result, not a lucky one. Innovation should be handled like any business initiative: with an eye on growth, results, and profit.

Think differently to develop original ideas that drive business value. In today’s economy, the ability to continually fuel innovation is what separates winning organizations from the rest. Idea generation should be managed, purposeful, and clearly linked to business objectives. Leading innovators succeed by balancing out-of-the-box thinking with sound management principles.

Create a streamlined and flexible approach to shepherd innovative ideas to market. The reality in every organization is that money is limited. To make sure you’re spending effectively, you must have a streamlined process for innovation. A good process will help to consistently identify your best projects and enable you to move them forward more efficiently.

Build a thriving work environment that drives innovation across your organization. We live in a world where the new replaces the old very quickly. Only organizations that keep pace with the shifting marketplace will be able to stay ahead. So how do the best companies adapt? They cultivate a climate in which employees are encouraged to innovate in a continuous and consistent manner. The companies that stay ahead have made innovation part of their DNA.

futurethink analysts develop case studies by drawing from a mix of extensive research, by conducting organizational and customer interviews (where possible), and by experiencing first-hand interactions with the organization. We want to thank those individuals who contributed to this case study and provided the information found herein, which made the Pixar story so fascinating.

We hope the information contained on the pages that follow offers some insight and inspiration for innovation in your organization.


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Pixar 101Pixar was born in 1986 when Apple founder Steve Jobs purchased the computer graphics division of Lucasfilm for $10 million and re-launched it as a separate company. Since then, Pixar has become a household name on the strength of the firm’s animated shorts, feature films, animated logos (for clients including IBM and Paramount), and commercials (for clients including Listerine and Life Savers).

In 1991, Pixar struck a distribution deal with Walt Disney Pictures, and in 2006, Pixar became a wholly owned subsidiary of The Walt Disney Company.

Dr. Ed Catmull (President) and John Lasseter (Chief Creative Officer) continue to guide the firm creatively and to symbolize Pixar’s passion for excellence. They are winners of multiple technical and creative awards, and they personally oversee the development of Pixar movies and training curriculum.

Pixar has been able to maintain a culture that invites input, insight, and constant improvement. Innovation has been a natural byproduct of this environment.

Pixar’s Self-Referential Tradition. Pixar includes references in its films to other works produced by the studio, including character cameo appearances, particular items which appear in almost every film, and in-jokes that refer to Pixar employees or the company’s past.

• A113: This hidden number appears in almost all the Pixar films in one form or another; it’s part of a license plate number on the van in Toy Story, as the number of the court room in Up, and appears on the ear tag of a rat in Ratatouille. A113 refers to the number of the animation classroom at California Institute of the Arts, the alma mater of Pixar executive John Lasseter and director Brad Bird, where many Pixar employees got their start. They like to hide this special number in their short and feature length films as an homage.

• John Ratzenberger: Lasseter refers to Ratzenberger as “Pixar’s good luck charm,” since the American actor has played a role in every single Pixar feature. Fans might know him as the amiable Abominable

Snowman in Monsters, Inc., or as Hamm, the snarky piggy bank, in the Toy Story trilogy.

• Luxo Ball: There is a yellow ball with a blue stripe and a red star, first shown in the short Luxo, Jr., that has been shown in several Pixar feature films and shorts, most prominently in the Toy Story franchise.

• Pizza Planet: This fictional pizza restaurant appears in Toy Story, and every film afterwards, except The Incredibles. In the films, the franchise’s pizza delivery truck either appears briefly on screen or characters use it to travel.

The Pixar Team CultureAt Pixar, emphasis is placed on the team over the individual. A rarity in the creative field, Pixar holds the artistic and technical teams in equal standing, both in terms of respect and compensation. In fact, “Pixarians” as they are called, are not ranked by their level of importance, but rather linked by complementary skills needed on a given project.iv As a result, Pixar boasts one of the lowest turnover rates in the industry, even though team members all work without employment contracts.v

What sets Pixar apart within their industry, is that most of the time, a studio assembles a cast of freelance professionals to work on a single project and cuts them loose when the picture is done.

Success Speaks for Itself: Each of Pixar’s feature films has been a critical and commercial success:

• 2008: WALL-E

• 2009: Up

• 2010: Toy Story 3

• 2011: Cars 2

• 2012: Brave

• 2013: Monsters University

• 2015: Inside Out

• 2015: The Good Dinosaur

• 1994: Toy Story

• 1998: A Bug’s Life

• 1999: Toy Story 2

• 2001: Monsters, Inc.

• 2003: Finding Nemo

• 2004: The Incredibles

• 2005: Cars

• 2007: Ratatouille


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At Pixar, a staff of writers, directors, animators, and technicians move from project to project. As a result, the studio has built a team of moviemakers who know and trust one another in ways unimaginable on most sets.vi

Pixar has always been known for its hands-off management style. It is a film studio that has set the benchmark for the rest of the industry—an industry traditionally known for its egos and nobody’s-stealing-my-idea attitude. When it merged with Disney, a company known for having a more regimented culture, critics worried that Disney would squash the creative culture that made Pixar successful. However, that has not happened, and the synergy that has developed between the two companies has proved successful.vii

An Emphasis on Collaboration. Within Pixar, there are three parallel groups that constantly talk to each other: Technical Development, Creative Development, and Production. Everyone has input, and teams embrace the knowledge that everything is a work in progress and no process is ever perfect. That’s because complacency is simply unacceptable at Pixar.

Pixar encourages constant collaboration, and the creative and technology teams are not expected—or even permitted—to perfect ideas before sharing them. This rapid “experiment and refine” approach helps the company make quicker decisions. At the same time, the emphasis on sharing helps employees get more comfortable with taking risks, which is critical for innovation to occur. By encouraging risk-taking with raw ideas, Pixar knows many will fail at first. But to them, that’s okay. They acknowledge that failure is part of the creative process so their motto is “screw up as fast as possible” so they can keep moving forward. This allows space for employees to explore wild thoughts and ideas that just might lead to an eventual great idea.

Ed Catmull explains the real meaning of failure to Pixar in his book, Creativity Inc. (2014), he writes, “The better, more subtle interpretation is that failure is a manifestation of learning and exploration. If you aren’t experiencing

failure, then you are making a far worse mistake: You are being driven by the desire to avoid it. And, for leaders especially, this strategy — trying to avoid failure by out-thinking it — dooms you to fail.”viii The evolution of WALL-E is an example of an idea that tanked at first, but through many iterations, eventually became great. To be exact, they went through 98,173 storyboards.ix

At Pixar, nobody is penalized for trying something that didn’t work.

A Wall of Pixar’s Sketches

“You’ve got a new idea and a good team and the idea doesn’t work.

The key concept is that you have to protect the new, and not judge the

team as they try to work things out. Dumb ideas are needed. I want to be

in that mess in the middle.”

—Ed Catmull,

President, Pixar


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Pixar University. Founded in 1997, Pixar University (PU) was designed to “help make art a team sport.” PU features a daily program of lectures, workshops, skill-building courses, and mind-bending events. In total, PU offers more than 100 courses, including the expected (film-making, painting, drawing, sculpting, and writing) and the unexpected (improvisation, storytelling, juggling, and belly dancing).

Team members come together at PU to express their creativity, network, and work together to meet project deadlines. Every employee can spend up to four hours each week at PU, and the average employee takes about six classes per year.x

An important side benefit of the PU curriculum is that it forces “students” to work together and complete tasks and assignments in real-time, helping them get over any embarrassment about sharing works in progress.

Randy Nelson, a former Dean of Pixar University, says, “We made the leap from an idea-centered business to a people-centered business. Instead of developing ideas, we develop people. Instead of investing in ideas, we invest in people. We’re trying to create a culture of learning, filled with lifelong learners…”xi

The Pixar Habitat. To foster continuous innovation, you have to build the right environment. The office space at Pixar, affectionately known as “the habitat,” is legendary. Massive airy atriums, espresso bars, foosball tables, mini-cottages instead of cubicles, and foot-propelled scooters are some of the highlights. There’s even a speakeasy, whose entrance is hidden by a bookshelf—revealed by pressing a button on a gold-toned statue.

The entire building, whose essential design elements came from Steve Jobs, is centered around a massive, open atrium that contains all the common facilities (including the restrooms). This layout forces disparate departments to come out of their offices and interact. Interaction and sharing are, by design, unavoidable. Ed Catmull even replaced an expensive, very long rectangular conference room table made by a famous designer because it kept people on the ends of the table from contributing to the conversation. To ensure that everyone, regardless of title, felt encouraged to “jump in”, Ed replaced it with an intimate square table which allowed for better interplay for those sitting around it.xii

Employees, especially in the animation department, are also invited to customize their offices to reflect their personalities and style. Previously mere cubicles, these open-front “mini cottages” have been transformed into castles, caves, and other cool spaces.

The Pixar headquarters also maintains a complete gallery of life-sized Pixar characters, including “failed” characters that didn’t make the final cut. For example, the gallery showcases unused renderings of Woody, the cowboy in Toy Story. Spotlighting these early drafts helps employees see that all steps in the creative process are valuable, which helps to encourage further exploration and risk-taking.xiii

“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they’ll screw it up.

If you give a mediocre idea to a great team, they’ll make it work.”

—Ed Catmull,

President, Pixar

Pixar Animation Studio’s Atrium


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Recharging Creative Minds. Film creation involves intense periods of development and long work hours. Pixar takes care to provide employees with health and wellness outlets to keep them motivated and healthy to prevent burnout. Pixar employees are provided regular breaks to recharge. The Pixar campus includes a soccer field, volleyball courts, and a pool. Recreational offerings include classes in yoga, tai chi, and Pilates.

Even better, doctors and masseuses visit the campus weekly, and full-time ergonomic experts are employed to ensure that workspaces are comfortable.

Leveraging the “Black Sheep.” Apart from offering physical space and amenities to its staffers, Pixar tries to leverage every possible emotion of its employees to create cinematic masterpieces. In an interview with the McKinsey Quarterly, Oscar-winning Pixar director Brad Bird explained how the company tapped its most frustrated employees to create The Incredibles.“So I said, ‘Give us the black sheep. I want artists who are frustrated. I want the ones who have another way of doing things that nobody’s listening to. Give us all the guys who are probably headed out the door.’ A lot of them were malcontents because they saw different ways of doing things. But there was little opportunity to try them, since the established way was working very, very well.”

“We gave the black sheep a chance to prove their theories, and we changed the way a number of things are done here. For less money per minute than was spent on the previous film, Finding Nemo, we did a movie that had three times the number of sets.”xiv

“Making a film, you have all three different departments, and what

you’re trying to do is find a way to get them to put forth their creativity in a harmonious way. Otherwise, it’s

like you have an orchestra where everybody’s playing their own music.

Each individual piece might be beautiful, but together they’re crazy.”

—Brad Bird,

Pixar Award-Winning Director


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The Pixar ProcessThe unique culture at Pixar encourages employees to do their best work. When it comes to how they do it, Pixar has the art of moviemaking down to a science. The company is also very open about sharing its secrets for making “movie magic.”

The Pixar process for animating a film follows 14 proprietary steps. Each step involves a different set of skills and people, but all phases of the process rely upon an open approach to creative input, innovative thinking, and concept honing.

• Pitching a Story: Employees pitch ideas to members of the development team, attempting to “sell” the uniqueness and potential of their concepts by using simple props like sketches and “animated” dialogue.

• Writing a Text Treatment: If the pitch goes well, a short summary of the story’s main idea is written. The goal is to strike the right balance between reality and the possibilities still to be captured during creative refinement and storyboarding.

• Drawing Storyboards: Storyboards create the “blueprint” for a story, based on a rough outline of the action and dialogue for each scene. The storyboarders then “pitch” their work to the director.

• Recording Voice Talent: Pixar employees record initial “scratch” voices to serve as guidance for the animators as they begin to detail their work. Professional voice talent (read: celebrities) is used later in the process. Sometimes, the films keep the original employee voices if they are unique and well-suited to the parts.

• Making Editorial Reels: Reels are videotapes of the storyboards, designed to let a story stand on its own without the power of the pitch person who sold the concept. This step lets the team see if the idea holds together and tells a compelling story.

• Creating the Look and Feel: Using the original text treatment, storyboards, and editorial reels, art directors start to lay on the backgrounds, texture, visual look, and surfaces that give dimension to a film.

• Sculpting and Detailing Models: Characters, sets, and props are designed by hand and modeled in 3D on computers. Each character can have hundreds of different movable parts to make it “move” on the screen, and each part must be programmed separately.

• Dressing Sets: Set dressers work closely with the director to ensure his or her vision becomes a reality and each setting is believable and exciting.

• Laying Out Shots: Layout crews choreograph shots to add emotion and story points to each scene. Different versions of each scene are given to the editorial department for use in editing the final story.

• Animating the Shots: Using computer software, Pixar animators stitch together a story that layers movement and facial expression into each scene.

• Shading of Characters and Sets: “Shaders” add color and texture on top of each character, such as fur, hair, scales, goose bumps, and changes in lighting on objects.

• Lighting the Scenes: Just as if on stage, each scene is lit to create the mood and emotion of the action—only here Pixar uses “digital light.”

• Rendering Data: This is where all the layers that have been created thus far are translated and put together into a single digital file.

• Final Touches: Writers, effects teams, and sound engineers add final touches to complete the magic.


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Sharing the MagicIn order to achieve such amazing results, Pixar has continually invested in technology, developing programs that have set the standard for utilizing computer graphics in filmmaking. The collaboration between the technical and creative teams has resulted in many proprietary in-house software systems, such as:

• Marionette: used for animation (modeling, animating, and lighting)

• Ringmaster: used for production management (scheduling, coordinating, and tracking projects)

• RenderMan: used for “rendering” (see definition on previous page) to create high-quality, photo-realistic images; RenderMan remains the industry standard

More important than the ability to create the most vibrant, realistic images, these technologies give the director the ability to truly get everything just right for the story—no sacrifices are made simply because the format is digital, as opposed to live-action. Pixar licenses RenderMan to others in the industry for their own use in computer graphics. Movies like The Lord of the Rings and Inception have used the program. In fall 2014, Pixar released a non-commercial version of the software for free, so that anyone can make their own Toy Story. In summer 2016, they will release an open-source version of their Universal Scene Description software. Pixar hopes that more filmmakers can use their software, and help advance the technologies in the production industry.xv

In 2015, Pixar released a free lesson titled “Pixar in a Box” on the Khan Academy website. Middle school and high schools learners can learn about the studio’s creative process through video lessons, and interactive activities. These tools connect academic concepts learned in school—like trigonometry and parabolas—to how filmmakers create worlds and animate characters.

Through this collaboration, Pixar hopes to excite K-12 students about STEM topics.

Considering the large role that technology plays in achieving success, the company is careful not to be limited by it. In hiring the emphasis is on skills and the ability to collaborate. Pixar’s philosophy is that if you have the breadth and depth of skills it needs, including the ability to communicate, it can teach you the tools. When looking for new hires, Pixar prefers someone who has mastered something; literally anything. This shows them that the person has the personality to commit to master something else, which Pixar can then channel into their business.xvi

Brad Bird captured the Pixar spirit and philosophy as succinctly as anyone in the organization. He came to Pixar with a resume that included Disney, Warner Brothers, and Fox. When he directed The Iron Giant, an animated sci-fi film, it was far from a commercial success. Yet, at Pixar, he was seen as having a personality that could not only master something, but was also not afraid to take risks, and was given the freedom to “shake it up.” One of the things he did was challenge everyone, in order to find the people around him who were really involved. When asked why Bird was brought in for this purpose, Ed Catmull said, “We must constantly challenge all of our assumptions and search for the flaws that could destroy our culture.”xvii

“I would say involved people make for better innovation.... You want people to be involved and engaged. Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything

in between. What they have in common is a restless, probing nature; ‘I want to get to the problem. There’s

something I want to do.’ If you had thermal glasses, you could see heat

coming off them.”—Brad Bird,

Pixar Award-Winning Director


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“You have to honor failure. Failure is just the negative

space around success.”—Randy Nelson,

Former Dean of Pixar University

Pixar Innovation Rules to Live ByLook for Unique Angles. Pixar has a rich history of actively looking for alternative perspectives. While researching A Bug’s Life, for example, they placed cameras in flowerbeds to observe how insects view the world. While developing Finding Nemo, Pixar populated the office with aquariums, arranged a diving trip to Hawaii, and brought in experts with diverse perspectives, such as marine biologists.

As Pixar creative chief John Lasseter told Reuters, “Each movie at Pixar involves research with college professors or taking trips to learn as much as we can about a particular subject matter... I have met a lot of top chefs around the world during my travels. Each one of them has said Ratatouille is their favorite movie and the only movie that truly captures what they do. Auto Week called Cars the best car movie because the details were spot on.” In Up, it was really important to animators that the pipes underneath the floating Victorian house connected the right way. They didn’t want a plumber watching the film to think, “Oh they took a lot of creative license.” For Pixar, the best way to get an audience to believe in an imaginary world is by faithfully studying our real one.xviii

Focus on Storytelling. The span between Pixar’s first Academy Award in 1988 (Tin Toy as Best Animated Short Film) and winning Best Animated Feature Film for Brave in 2012 represents two decades of continuous innovation in storytelling. Toy Story, Finding Nemo, The Incredibles,

Ratatouille, WALL-E, Up , and Toy Story 3 were all nominated for Academy Awards for best screenplay. A great story is the foundation of every Pixar movie.

As Lasseter puts it, “No amount of great animation will save a bad story.” Directors pitch their story ideas to Lasseter in the form of storyboards, and he funds the best ideas. He’s looking for stories that appeal to a core human truth about being alive - regardless of if we see it through the eyes of dinosaurs, ants, or cars. To maintain this standard, Lasseter reserves the right to stop projects in any stage of production. He ended a project in 2010 called Newt when the project wasn’t working in pre-production, lacking a distinctive premise.

Take Smart Risks. The Pixar team loves to challenge its audience. They also know that customers want to see something different every time they go to the movie theater. They have to take chances in order to deliver the unexpected. Take Up, for example. It’s the story of a grouchy, widowed balloon salesman accompanied by a bouncy, chubby kid trying to earn a scouting badge, and they somehow end up in the wilderness of South America. It doesn’t exactly seem like a slam dunk summer blockbuster.

Simplexity: When designing for their films, artists use simplexity. Ricky Nierva, Pixar production designer, describes the process as an exercise in selective detail. He says simplexity, “is the art of simplifying the image down to its essence. But the complexity that you layer on top of it—in texture, design or detail—is masked by how simple the form is.” For example, in the movie Up, Carl is shaped like a box to represent the past giving him a clean, carictured look, but his range of expression, and the texure of his clothing make him complex, and believable.


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In April of 2009, The New York Times reported that Wall Street and toy retailers were “notably down on Up.” The article noted that Richard Greenfield of Pali Research had downgraded Disney shares to sell, citing a poor outlook for Up. “We doubt younger boys will be that excited by the main character,” he wrote.xix

The Pixar team knew they were taking a risk. “Probably more than any other movie we’ve made here at Pixar, Up was the one we were the most nervous about,” Lasseter told Reuters. “We think our audience is very smart, especially kids. But when someone describes Up to you, it doesn’t seem like a movie kids would like. It’s about a 78-year-old guy!”

Not that Lasseter let those doubts stop a great idea.

“Quality is the best business plan” is one of his favorite lines. The Up risk certainly paid off for Pixar. The film was a box office and critical smash and received two Academy Awards.

Never Stop Improving. After every film, teams get together to do a “brain dump” and discuss areas for improvement. The goal is not to assign blame, but to conduct a candid self-assessment in an effort to identify opportunities to fix problems and make the next film even better.

Spotlight Experimentation. What other company do you know that shares its mistakes with its customers? Pixar features outtakes (including scenes that didn’t work, flawed animation, voiceovers that didn’t sync, etc.) at the end of its films, on its DVDs, and on its website. These “goofs” are educational, fun, and offer a peek at the Pixar creative

process – the most memorable being “Incredi-Blunders”, a series of technical bloopers, which includes a pantless Mr. Incredible walking around his home. They also provide animators with outlets for creating the scenes that they wish they’d done for the real film.xx

Learn Together. Because creating a film involves many different talents, skills, and capabilities, the company is careful to constantly engage disparate departments in a collaborative environment where learning can be shared. Bird discusses the importance of learning as a team in discussing his approach to working on a film. “I said, ‘Look, this is a young team. As individual animators, we all have different strengths and weaknesses, but if we can interconnect all our strengths, we are collectively the greatest animator on earth. So I want you guys to speak up and drop your drawers. We’re going to look at your scenes in front of everybody. Everyone will get humiliated and encouraged together. If there is a solution, I want everyone to hear the solution, so everyone adds it to their toolkit. I’m going to take my shot at what I think will improve a scene, but if you see something different, go ahead and disagree. I don’t know all the answers.”xxi

This democratic approach slowly got employees to trust one another and feel comfortable sharing their opinions, insights, and ideas.

Eliminate Inefficiencies: Jean-Claude Kalache, the director of photography for Monsters University, wanted to find a faster techniques for lighting his scenes. Researching with a colleague, Kalache discovered a remedy in a software called “global illumination,” which, to put it simply, imitates lights in real life. It allowed Kalache and his team to place only a few lights – rather than hundreds – and move them around, adjusting the lighting in the scene nearly as fluidly as in live-action movies. The new technology not only made them more efficient, but it enabled them to be more creative, providing them with time to experiment and invest more energy into how the lighting reflected the mood of a particular scene. “Now we felt we’re a lot more artistic in our setups and we have a lot more time to explore.”xxii


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Be Unconventional. WALL-E, a robot love story set in a post-apocalyptic world full of trash, and Ratatouille, a French rat who aspires to be a chef, were definitely unusual ideas. Pixar wasn’t even sure they would work. But, desiring to be a company known for doing things that aren’t obvious, they bought into someone’s vision and took a chance. Catmull says, “If we aren’t always at least a little scared, we’re not doing our job. If you want to be original, you have to accept the uncertainty, even when it’s uncomfortable, and have the capability to recover when you take a big risk and fail.” They key to recovering? Hiring talented people with the right mindset.xxiii

Playing it safe doesn’t lead to sustained success. Staying in an “unstable” middle place is where new ideas are formed and art, economics, time, and technology are all balanced. This middle place leads to sustained success.xxiv

“Plussing” Moves Ideas Forward: The criticism at Pixar meetings can be brutal, and this is where “plussing” has played a game-changing role at Pixar. Rather than randomly critique a sketch or shoot down an idea, the general rule is that you may only criticize an idea if you also add a constructive suggestion. Hence the name “plussing.” Pixar’s approach is closer to a structured debate. The goal is to critically review existing work, often rigorously, and to generate new ideas that build further and create something better.xxv

This democratic approach exists across the organization, as all employees learn to trust one another and feel comfortable sharing their opinions, insights, and ideas. Every day, teams of animators gather first thing in the morning to review each other’s frames from the previous day, and criticize nearly everything about them.

No detail is too small to critique and no one is prohibited from arguing against the work of someone else. This intense process, sometimes called “shredding,” is vital to Pixar’s ability to release quality work again and again, and reiterates the core belief that contributions can come from everybody, anybody.xxvi

The upper echelons are not exempt from the mega doses of healthy criticism. Every few months, the director of each Pixar film meets with the “brain trust,” a group of senior creative staff (directors, writers, heads of story etc.) After a screening, their peers provide feedback about what they liked and what needed to be improved – Catmull describes it as, “frank talk, spirited debate, laughter and love.” Candor is expected, as is a spirit of helping one another to make great films. Catmull says, “My job in the room isn’t to participate in discussion. My job is to look at the dynamics in the room.” He measures a team not by output, but by spirit and whether team members are laughing. “And when it goes right, magic happens.”xxvii

Pixar’s unique core principles of story, appeal and believeability, and its design tools—research, iteration, and collaboration—come together to create a replicable process for spectacular film making. Lasseter says if you can tell a compelling story, with memorable and believable characters who inhabit a believable world, then the audience will be swept away and totally entertained.


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What’s Next for Pixar?Next up. Pixar has five movies in its pipeline. Finding Dory, the sequel to Finding Nemo, is to be released in 2016, and will reunite Dory, Marlin, and the “Tank Gang.”xxviii Three more sequel movies are coming in the next 3 years, Cars 3 (2016), Toy Story 4 (2018) and The Incredibles (2019), exceeding Ed Catmull’s announcement that Pixar will release one original film per year and sequels every other year. In terms of original stories, Lee Unkrinch is directing Coco, a film about the Mexican holiday Dia De Los Muertos set for release in 2017.

When Disney acquired Pixar in 2006, Walt Disney Animation Studios was producing movies that had poor critic reviews, depreciated revenue per film, and sporadic award nominations. Disney CEO Bob Igor was prepared to shut the failing studio, and keep Pixar as the only operating animation studio within the organization.

Catmull and Lasseter refused, and instead would act as President and Chief Creative Officer, respectively, for Disney Animation and return the magic to this beloved cultural institution. Disney Animation was plagued by “creative executives” – translation: cookie-cutter MBA types lacking an artist’s touch and were in charge through attrition – working at odds with creative staff who loved the art form and grew up wanting to create animation. The former C-suite alienated Disney artists from their work: they assigned the projects to animators, reeled off notes of revisions then backtracked, and subjected films to “bake-off’s” – screenings of two or three films in rapid succession and then deeming the one in the “best shape” as ready for release in the next available release slot.

To rescue the studio, Catmull and Lasseter needed to replicate what made Pixar so successful: encourage collaboration, get directors back to a processes that make movies better, and let go of the people who were there for their career and not for the films.

Culture of Collaboration: After witnessing a restrained feedback session after a screening, Catmull mandated that everyone speak openly because every employee’s opinion was welcome, no matter their experience or position. It took two years for this culture to take hold at Disney Animation. In the same vein, he helped Lasseter create The Caffeine Pitch a community hub in the center of Disney Animation HQ where artists can convene to collaborate.

Disney’s Story Trust: Based on Pixar’s “braintrust,” they implemented intensive meetings with top creative minds, including themselves, that force directors to look at their work critically through open feedback and dialogue. Disney directors speak highly of the Lasseter suggestions, big decisions and tiny tweaks, which end up in their films, as well as the focus and expertise he has on making every Disney project a powerful story.

Emotional Heart: The Pixar moguls encouraged Disney artists to tap into their passion, use creative freedom, and draw from their life experience in order to magic magical movies. The Pixar duo injected Disney Animation with the much needed “emotional heart” it lacked. In each new Disney movie he touched, Lasseter pushed directors to focus on their protagonists’ intense motivation to change their circumstances.


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They now dedicate around two years of story development to this very feat; making characters that are emotionally irresistible. This true shift appeared in Tangled in 2010, the film outperformed the last two Disney animated movies combined, and starred a heroine motivated by self-reliance rather than the love of a man.

It’s the Catmull and Lasseter touch that made Frozen a box-office sensation. Without their leadership, the film would not have broken the record for highest grossing animated film of all time, or won Disney its first Oscar for “Best Animated Feature.” Hopefully, for Disney Animation, the uptick in revenue, critical acclaim and prestige will continue with Zootopia coming out in 2016, and a new movie in the works called Moana, set in the South Pacific. Catmull and Lasseter will be paramount to the continued success, and by keeping the studio separate from Pixar, they seek to create for the next generation films steeped in Disney’s traditions and infused with the company’s singular family-friendly magic.xxix

When a business scores a string of triumphs or attains a dominant market position, its people often stop trying to improve. Pixar chief Ed Catmull is determined that Pixar will be different. He personally ensures that postmortems of every production are taken seriously by all employees, and he regularly reminds employees that Pixar has made plenty of mistakes in the past and still doesn’t have it all figured out.

Clearly, Pixar’s approach to innovation has delivered impressive results, both creatively and financially. For the Pixar team, however, complacency is unacceptable. You can expect to see Pixar continue to innovate, grow, and break rules for many years to come.


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What Can You Learn from Pixar?Set a foundation that defines innovation objectives and mobilizes your efforts.Pixar states that it is not an idea business but a people business. And its people are encouraged to embrace experimentation and constant improvement to be the best in the business.

• What are the guiding principles that define innovation for your organization?

• What are the core values that your employees share? How are you encouraging them to embrace them?

Think differently to develop original ideas that drive business value. Pixar continually looks outside its organizational walls to improve itself, and get new inspiration in the process. It wasn’t afraid to engage a new director for The Incredibles, and it taps experts from different areas when creating a film to make it as authentic and imaginative as possible (think: going on expert deep dives when creating Finding Nemo).

• How will you get new ideas and inspiration from outside your organization?

• Who can you tap to bring new perspectives and learnings to a project?


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Create a streamlined and flexible approach to shepherd innovative ideas to market. Pixar has clearly outlined a way to make the art of moviemaking a science with its 14-step program. In this process, artisans can focus while gaining input from the team.

• How can you clearly articulate what each person’s role is in your innovation process?

• What workflows do you have in place to move ideas forward, and improve them in the process?

Build a thriving work environment that drives innovation across your organization. At Pixar, culture is king. The focus is entirely on the team (not the individual) and collaboration.

• How can you invest in relevant training to spur thinking and help employees be more innovative?

• How can you change your physical work environment to encourage both formal and informal collaboration and interaction?


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Additional ReadingBarnes, Brooks. “Pixar’s Art Leaves Profit Watchers Edgy.” The New York Times (April 5, 2009).

BBC News. “Disney Announces Monsters Inc Sequel.” BBC News (April 23, 2010).

Beiler, Jeremy and Melena Ryzik. “A Rare Look Inside Pixar.” The New York Times (February 10, 2011).

Brown, Lane. “Up Director Pete Docter Reacts to His Oscar Nominations.” New York Magazine (February 2, 2010).

Carmody, Tim. “How Math Makes the Movies and Games We Love.” The Verge (March 7, 2013)

Catmull, Ed. Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. 8 April 2014. Random House. Print.

“The Conservatism of Pixar Films.” New York Times Blog (January 22, 2010).

Desowitz, Bill. “Going ‘Up’ With ‘Simplexity’.” (30 Dec 2015). http://www.awn.com/animationworld/going-simplexity

Fast Company. “Pixar Turns 25.” Fast Company (February 3, 2011).

Frauenfelder, Mark. “Pixar’s 22 Rules of Storytelling.” Boing Boing (7 March 2013).

Kit, Zorianna. “A Minute With: Disney’s John Lasseter on Creating Oscar Magic.” Reuters (25 February 2010).

Kuang, Cliff. “The Inside Story: 5 Secrets to Pixar’s Success.” (13 October 11).

Loftus, Tom. “Pixar President Urges Companies to Tolerate Failure and ‘Mess’.” 7 Oct 2015. http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/10/07/pixar-president-urges-companies-to-tolerate-failure-and-mess/

McCarty, Cara. “Simplexity.” “Process Lab and Pixar.” Museum Placard Pixar the Design of Story. Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum, New York, NY. (5 Dec 2015).

Paik, Karen. To Infinity and Beyond!: The Story of Pixar Animation Studios. 3 Nov 2015. Chronicle Books LLC. Print

“Why Pixar Movies are So Good.” 30 July 2015. http://www.techinsider.io/why-pixar-movies-are-so-good-2015-7

Online ReferencesInnovation Lessons from Pixar: An interview with Oscar-winning director Brad Bird: <http://www.mckinsey.com/insights/innovation/innovation_lessons_from_pixar_an_interview_with_oscar-winning_director_brad_bird>

Inside Pixar: We’re About Telling Stories. Bloomberg News: <www.bloomberg.com/video/inside-pixar-we-re-about-telling-stories-MS1Pj0M6TIyWFD1VNWEEYA.html>

Pixar: <www.pixar.com>

Pixar In A Box. Khan Academy. https://www.khanacademy.org/partner-content/pixar/start

Pixar on YouTube: <www.youtube.com/user/DisneyPixar>

Pixar on Twitter: <https://twitter.com/DisneyPixar>

Pixar Talk Blog: <www.pixartalk.com>

Randy Nelson, the former dean of Pixar University on the Age of Collaboration: <www.youtube.com/watch?v=QhXJe8ANws8>

Walt Disney Company Annual Report 2012: <www.thewaltdisneycompany.com>


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ENDNOTESi “All Time Worldwide Box Office Grosses.” All Time Worldwide Box Office Grosses. (31 Dec. 2014). http://www.boxofficemojo.com/alltime/world/

ii “List of Pixar Awards and Nominations (feature Films).” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation, (31 Dec. 2014). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_Pixar_awards_and_nominations_%28feature_films%29

iii “CEO’s Picks: Most Innovative Companies.” (April 2009). http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/stories/2009-04-08/ceos-picks-most-innovative-companies

iv Capodagli, Bill. (October 2010). “Pixar’s Eight Beliefs That Create a Culture of Passion.” www.hrmtoday.com/featured-stories/pixar’s-eight-beliefs-that-create-a-culture-of-passion/

v Graser, Mark. (December 1999). “Pixar’s Payday.” www.variety.com/1999/film/news/pixar-s-payday-1117760211

vi “Animating a Blockbuster: How Pixar Built Toy Story 3 | WIRED.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital, (31 Dec. 2014). http://www.wired.com/2010/05/process_pixar

vii Lam, David. (January 2007). “Merger Synergies Through Workforce Reduction.” www.iveybusinessjournal.com/topics/strategy/merger-synergies-through-workforce-reduction#.UryanWRDt5U

viii “Pixar Cofounder Ed Catmull on Failure and Why Fostering a Fearless Culture Is the Key to Groundbreaking Creative Work.” Brain Pickings RSS. (31 Dec. 2014). http://www.brainpickings.org/2014/05/02/creativity-inc-ed-catmull-book/

ix O’Hara, Helen. “The Secret of Pixar’s Success.” www.empireonline.com/features/secret-of-pixars-success/p5

x Taylor, William. (January 2006). “How Pixar Adds a New School of Thought to Disney.” New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/business/yourmoney/29pixar.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0

xi Taylor, William. (January 2006). “How Pixar Adds a New School of Thought to Disney.” New York Times: http://www.nytimes.com/2006/01/29/business/yourmoney/29pixar.html?pagewanted=print&_r=0

xii Catmull, Edwin, and Amy Wallace. “Chapter 1: Animated.” Creativity Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. Random House, 2014.

xiii “Pixar Headquarters and the Legacy of Steve Jobs.” (July 2012). www.officesnapshots.com/2012/07/16/pixar-headquarters-and-the-legacy-of-steve-jobs/

xiv Rao, Hayagreeva. (April 2008). “Innovation Lessons from Pixar: An Interview with Oscar-Winning Director Brad Bird.” www.mckinsey.com/insights/innovation/innovation_lessons_from_pixar_an_interview_with_oscar-winning_director_brad_bird

xv “Pixar Animation Studio’s Universal Scene Description to be Open-Sourced.” 10 Aug 2015. (3 Dec 2015). http://graphics.pixar.com/usd/docs/Open%2BSource%2BAnnouncement.html

xvi “Hiring at Pixar” Rasmusson Software Consulting. www.rasmusson.wordpress.com/2009/02/10/hiring-at-pixar/

xvii Stoddard, Alan. (April 2011). “Institutionalizing Emergent Strategy: Pixar’s Process for “Going from Suck to Nonsuck.” http://blog.innosight.com/2011/04/06/institutionalizing-emergent-strategy-pixar%E2%80%99s-process-for-%E2%80%9Cgoing-from-suck-to-nonsuck%E2%80%9D/

xviii “Perfecting Pixar’s Movies Takes a Crazy Amount of Research.” (3 Dec 2015). http://www.wired.com/2015/10/perfecting-pixars-movies-takes-crazy-amount-research/#slide-2


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xix Barnes, Brooks. (April 2009). “Pixar’s Art Leaves Profit Watchers Edgy” www.nytimes.com/2009/04/06/business/media/06pixar.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0

xx “Outtakes.” Pixar Wiki. (31 Dec. 2014). http://pixar.wikia.com/Outtakes

xxi Rao, Hayagreeva. (April 2008). “Innovation Lessons from Pixar: An Interview with Oscar-Winning Director Brad Bird.” www.mckinsey.com/insights/innovation/innovation_lessons_from_pixar_an_interview_with_oscar-winning_director_brad_bird

xxii “How Pixar Unlocks Imagination With Technology.” The Atlantic. Atlantic Media Company, 24 June 2013. (31 Dec. 2014).

xxiii Catmull, Ed. (September 2008). “How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity.” www.hbr.org/2008/09/how-pixar-fosters-collective-creativity/

xxiv Parr, Ben. (March 2010). “How Pixar Creates Great Films and Balances Art, Tech and Success.” www.mashable.com/2010/03/24/ed-catmull-economist-pixar/

xxv “‘Plussing’ - How Pixar Transforms Critiquing into Creating.” THINK LIKE AN INNOVATOR. (31 Dec. 2014). http://www.thinklikeaninnovator.com/plussing-how-pixar-transforms-critiquing-into-creating/

xxvi “Why Fighting For Our Ideas Makes Them Better.” 99U. (31 Dec. 2014). http://99u.com/articles/7224/why-fighting-for-our-ideas-makes-them-better

xxvii Loftus, Tom. “Pixar President Urges Companies to Tolerate Failure and ‘Mess’.” The Wall Street Journal 7 Oct 2015. http://blogs.wsj.com/cio/2015/10/07/pixar-president-urges-companies-to-tolerate-failure-and-mess/

xxviii “Finding Dory.” Wikipedia. Wikimedia Foundation. (31 Dec. 2014). http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Finding_Dory

xxix “Big Hero 6 Proves It: Pixar’s Gurus Have Brought the Magic Back to Disney Animation | WIRED.” Wired.com. Conde Nast Digital. (31 Dec. 2014). http://www.wired.com/2014/10/big-hero-6/

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