How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity

he Pixar Case Study was incredibly enlightening especially with the issues of company culture I experience from my work day to day. As an employee you begin to feel underappreciated for not being included in certain meetings, not being able to give your feedback that you have real knowledge and experience in, not feeling like your “creative freedom” is really any sort of freedom. This case study makes me believe that there are actually better places to work, and not everywhere is a ran like tyranny. There’s still hope!

The following lessons I have taken from reading the case study, are lessons that I hope to apply to my own business in the future. I’m actually glad that I get to work with people who are so incredibly blind, because it makes my vision that much more clearer.

Lesson 1: High standards produces high quality.

Pixar is involved in the movie industry whose customers demand something new every time they go to the theater. With the high bar already set from their previous movies, creating the new movies is always that much harder because of the expectation already set. It takes vision, teamwork and uniqueness to create those unexpected ideas that people will be entertained and enticed by. “If you want to be original, you have to accept the uncertainty, even when it’s uncomfortable” (12). With being one of the best movie producers out there, their only recovery and avoidance from any type of failure is to employ talented people to make sure the company withholds it quality standards. And sometimes with talent, egos and personalities of all traits are not too far from following. This affects how each employee can effectively work with each other. They must have trust and respect for each other to fully cultivate a great idea and company culture. So in order to keep having the best ideas and best movies out there, Pixar decided that they would “construct an environment that nurtures trusting and respectful relationships and unleashes everyone’s creativity” (12). They knew that the result would be a vibrant community where talented people were loyal to each other and would share their work collectively. They knew by creating this standard, it would make people feel like they were part of something extraordinary. With high standards comes the expectation for a higher quality output.

Lesson 2: Leaders are the true implementers of company culture.

In the Pixar Case Study, they tell a story of how at one time they were trying to create the movies A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2. With the main proven filmmakers, John, Andrew Stanton, Lee Unkrich and Joe Ranft creating A Bug’s Life, they were unable to help with the creative leadership of Toy Story 2 which then fell into many production issues and they were not seeing any improvements. Making matters worse, the