STRATEGY
Sustaining creativity and Pixar Management educators are used to drawing insights from corporate case studies, and one would be hard-pressed to find a more striking example of a sustainably creative organisation than Pixar. Starting with Toy Story in 1995, Pixar consistently produced films over the next 25 years that were not only wildly successful commercially but also critically acclaimed and relentlessly innovative. How does one avoid the creative stagnation that tends to follow spells of innovation at even the most successful companies? This is exactly the question that Pixar Co-Founder and former President, Ed Catmull, asked himself as the scope of Toy Story ’s success sank in. The answers, which he formulated as he guided the company through an unprecedented string of successes over the following years can be found in his book, Creativity Inc . The book is a battle-tested guide for managing a highly skilled and ambitious workforce by instilling a culture that fosters creativity. What makes Catmull’s insights particularly relevant to creativity in the learning context is his long history in education – he holds a PhD in computer science and headed an academic department before co-founding Pixar. I reached out to Catmull to learn of his ideas for creativity in business education, and one theme that kept re-emerging is the importance of risk-taking, without which innovation simply cannot happen. This can take the form of departing from established ways of doing things, of bringing in outside perspectives, and even of launching head-first into a project that may raise a few eyebrows. If you think about it, compared to greenlighting a film about a rat that likes to cook and eventually becomes a celebrated chef [the premise behind Pixar’s 2007 film, Ratatouille ] bringing a comedian into a Business School does not sound that crazy at all. For Catmull, several things are key to establishing a risk-taking culture. The first one is de-stigmatising failure. This notion is one which business educators who are also researchers should be receptive to; after all, failure is an important part of the research process. Second, and building on the above, is viewing failures as valuable lessons. Third is making sure that losses from failed experiments are manageable and that experiments can be stopped before they become too costly. Of course, all of this is much easier said than done. While our experiment on collaborating with a comedian has proved successful, this was not a pre-ordained outcome.
DAVID STOLIN is a Professor of Finance at TBS Education. His work on investment management and corporate governance has been published in top-tier journals such as the Journal of Finance and Management Science and covered by the Financial Times and Le Monde . He holds a PhD in finance from London Business School.
The knowledge that we could – and were free to – fail, was crucial. As our Inspiring Guest project continues, with new invitees collaborating with us in new formats on new kinds of outputs, we will keep taking risks. Without it, there can be no inspiration, no creativity, and no innovation.
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AMBITION | Be in Brilliant Company
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