Writing in January 2023, Ed Catmull, Pixar’s co-founder, reflects on the nearly 10 years that have elapsed since the initial publication of Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration. He observes that while reader response was largely positive, many people mistakenly believed that Pixar had discovered a guaranteed method for producing blockbusters. Catmull corrects this impression, contending that new, unpredictable problems will always arise in the creative process. He emphasizes that the book’s actual subject is signaled by its subtitle, and he stresses the value of learning to overcome the hidden factors that can hinder a team’s creative impulses. 

Catmull explains that in the expanded edition, he has preserved the original text but has added asterisks to flag passages that warrant further discussion; new postscripts now appear at the conclusion of certain chapters. In addition to the four postscripts, the revised version includes two entirely new chapters. Chapter 14 revisits Notes Day, Pixar’s 2013 studio-wide shutdown, which began as a cost-cutting exercise but revealed evidence of a more serious erosion of the studio’s founding values. Chapter 15 examines the company’s unique blend of hierarchy, playfulness, and human emotion, and it also discloses a personal crisis that Catmull withheld from the first edition. His governing aim, he concludes, has always been to build a creative culture that will be durable enough to outlast its founders—a task he compares to raising a child.

Catmull opens by describing Pixar’s 15-acre campus near San Francisco, a location that Steve Jobs, the studio’s early investor and backer, designed to encourage collaboration. Animators are free to personalize their workspaces extravagantly, and traditions like the in-house band competition “Pixarpalooza” signal the studio’s emphasis on self-expression. However, Catmull argues that Pixar’s true innovation is its systematic commitment to uncovering and solving hidden problems.

That sense of purpose was not always clear to him. When Toy Story debuted on November 22, 1995, earning upwards of $358 million, it became the first computer-generated feature film ever produced, fulfilling Catmull’s long-held dream to accomplish such a technical and critical triumph. However, in the wake of this hard-earned success, Catmull felt lost. Searching for a new sense of purpose, he noted that even the most successful Silicon Valley companies eventually made obvious, avoidable mistakes that compromised the organization. Realizing that the companies' leaders became so focused on external competition that they never developed genuine self-scrutiny, Catmull feared that Pixar would repeat this pattern. He resolved that protecting the company from these internal and insidiously destructive forces would be his next mission.

Both Catmull and his longtime creative partner, John Lasseter (Pixar’s chief creative officer), have also co-led Disney Animation since Disney acquired Pixar in 2006. Catmull notes that Creativity, Inc. is organized into four sections and is intended to be a guide for anyone who works within a creative enterprise. Its core argument is that although creativity faces many obstacles, the most effective managers acknowledge uncertainty, resist micromanaging their people, accept risk, and address any issue that triggers fear or harms morale.

For over a decade, Pixar held creative meetings around a long, narrow conference table in a room called West One, but the layout created an unintended hierarchy. The higher-ranked team members at the center—including Catmull and John Lasseter—communicated freely, while those at the ends felt excluded, and the issue was exacerbated by a place-card system that reinforced rank and hierarchy. Crucially, because Catmull and Lasseter were always seated centrally, they remained unaware that others were being silenced by the seating plan itself. Only a chance meeting in a smaller room with a square table made Catmull realize that when everyone could make eye contact, conversation flowed more freely. Catmull replaced the table, but his efforts to make the meetings more egalitarian were still stymied by the persistence of the place-card habit. Then Andrew Stanton, one of the studio’s directors, cheerfully scrambled the place cards, seating everyone randomly. As Catmull notes, this story illustrates that fixing the primary problem does not automatically clear the secondary habits that the issue created.

Referring to his childhood in Salt Lake City, Catmull declares that his two boyhood heroes were Walt Disney, who created new worlds, and Albert Einstein, who reframed existing ones. In 1956, when he watched Walt Disney’s weekly television program on animation techniques, he was excited to see Donald Duck coming to life on a drawing pad. This educational show crystallized his curiosity about how animators make their characters convey emotion.

As a young adult, Catmull recognized his limited drawing talent and could find no clear path to work for Disney, so he pursued physics and computer science at the University of Utah, studying under graphics pioneer Ivan Sutherland and working alongside future innovators Jim Clark, John Warnock, and Alan Kay. Funded by the government’s Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA), this group of graduate students built a culture of autonomy and trust, and Catmull would seek to replicate this template in other contexts throughout his career. 

By his mid-20s, he had set a new goal: to make the first computer-animated feature film. His 1972 short film Hand—a digitized model of his own hand—represented the leading edge of the field at its 1973 debut because he found a new way to render curved surfaces. When he took a trip to Disney that year to propose a technology-exchange program, his idea was dismissed because Disney executives blamed computers for their recent poor experience with attempting to rendering bubbles in a film. Declining an offer to join Disney’s theme park design division, Catmull completed his PhD in 1974 with a respectable list of innovations to his name. One day, he received a mysterious phone call from the New York Institute of Technology that would redirect his career.

The NYIT call connected Catmull to Alex Schure, a wealthy former college chancellor who was building a computer animation research lab. Schure believed in computers’ potential role in animation and gave Catmull full freedom to hire his own team. Catmull’s first significant decision was to bring on Alvy Ray Smith, disregarding his own instinctive unease in hiring a computer scientist whose credentials outshone his own. When Smith proved to be an indispensable member of the team, Catmull learned the importance of always pursuing top talent, regardless of his own personal insecurities. Catmull and Smith also chose to publish their research openly, and their candor allowed them to build lasting relationships that were more valuable than any competitive advantage they might have gained through secrecy.

Their progress in creating a film stalled for lack of storytellers, but Star Wars’ enormous success in 1977 prompted filmmaker George Lucas to launch a computer division at his company Lucasfilm two years later, with Catmull at its head. The team developed the Pixar Image Computer, and Alvy Smith and colleague Loren Carpenter jointly coined the name “Pixar” (which is a combination of a fabricated Spanish-esque verb, “pixer,” and the word “radar”). The company’s attempt to build a digital editing system failed because Lucasfilm’s film editors were so set in their ways that they refused to adopt it. The setback taught Catmull that viable technology cannot succeed without the confidence of its intended users.

In 1983, Catmull met John Lasseter, a young Disney animator who wanted to create a film that would be “the first to place hand-drawn characters inside computer-generated backgrounds” (33). When Lasseter pitched his unusual story idea to Disney (one that would eventually go on to become The Brave Little Toaster), he was fired from Disney and soon joined Pixar to help with the short film, The Adventures of André and Wally B. When the half-finished film was screened at the 1984 SIGGRAPH (Special Interest Group on Computer Graphics and Interactive Techniques) conference, audiences were so engaged by the story that they didn’t notice the unfinished wireframe sequences. This experienced confirmed for Catmull that a good story is more important than polished visuals.

Lucas’s 1983 divorce strained Lucasfilm’s finances, forcing him to sell Pixar. After being shopped to 20 prospective buyers (including General Motors and Philips) with no success, Steve Jobs reengaged the Pixar team. (He had previously proposed helping Pixar to become a personal computer company, but Catmull and his team had declined.) Now, having recently been ousted from Apple, Jobs approached again and  agreed to let the division pursue computer animation. The deal closed in February; Jobs paid $5 million, invested another $5 million, and held 70% of the new company’s stock, with 30% going to the employees. Pixar was finally independent.

As Pixar’s new president, Catmull was daunted by his painful awareness that he had no background in manufacturing or business. On the advice of various Silicon Valley peers, he made a dire mistake by pricing the Pixar Image Computer much too high at $122,000. Even though the price was soon lowered, the company could not erase its reputation for being overpriced. In his commentary, Catmull laments settling for generic advice instead of asking the fundamental questions that would have led to a better approach.

While studying postwar Japanese manufacturing, Catmull found a better model. While American factories only allowed managers to halt the production line, any Toyota employee was empowered to stop the line upon identifying a problem. Other Japanese companies adopted this principle as well, achieving dramatic quality improvements. The lesson that Catmull took from this was: “You don't have to ask permission to take responsibility” (51). 

Despite winning Oscar-level recognition for the short films Luxo Jr. and Tin Toy, Pixar sold only 300 Image Computers and bled money steadily. Steve Jobs, who was largely occupied with other projects of his own, invested $54 million of his own money to keep Pixar afloat. He attempted to sell the company three times, but none of the deals went through. Catmull learned to manage disagreements with Jobs by restating his position patiently over multiple conversations until one of them was persuaded. In instances where no consensus was reached, Catmull simply proceeded as he wished. After Pixar laid off a third of its staff in 1991, the company pivoted away from selling hardware and began making animated commercials. Pixar then struck a three-picture deal with Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg; Jobs negotiated fiercely to ensure that Pixar retained control of the technology it had developed.

As Pixar leadership began work on Toy Story, the creative team found itself stymied by unhelpful “studio notes” from Disney executives, who misguidedly suggested making the main character, Woody, more mean-spirited. After Disney halted production on the film, the Pixar creative team (led by John Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Joe Ranft, and editor Lee Unkrich, who joined in 1994) rebuilt the script. The completed picture finally opened in November 1995 and became the year’s top-grossing release. Jobs correctly predicted that the film’s success would force Disney CEO Michael Eisner to renegotiate their partnership, so he preemptively took Pixar public and gained the leverage to negotiate a new 50/50 deal with Disney.

Despite Toy Story’s immense success, Catmull felt empty. He was also troubled to discover that Pixar’s production managers had felt marginalized throughout the film’s development, as their voices had been suppressed by a rigid communication hierarchy. Catmull opened up communication across all levels and gained a new sense of purpose when he resolved to build a supportive company culture. With this in mind, he dedicated himself to the ongoing task of finding and fixing any hidden organizational problems that threatened to damage the company.

After the success of Toy Story, Pixar organized itself around two mantras: “Story Is King” and “Trust the Process” (66). However, Catmull states that both of these ideals would prove insufficient guidelines for Pixar’s development; in general, he warns against adopting empty catchphrases.

In 1997, Disney requested a lower-budget, direct-to-video sequel to Toy Story. Pixar agreed, but the creative team quickly discovered that they could not aim below their standards. The project also created a demoralizing divide between the favored employees working on A Bug’s Life and a perceived “lesser” group working on Toy Story 2. Pixar persuaded Disney to upgrade the sequel to a theatrical release, but because an inexperienced directing duo was assigned to the project, the story reels showed no improvement over months of work. After A Bug’s Life opened in late 1998, Lasseter reviewed the footage and declared the film a disaster. Pixar’s peer-review team, unofficially dubbed the Braintrust, consisted of Lasseter, Andrew Stanton, Pete Docter, Joe Ranft, and Lee Unkrich; this group had formed organically during Toy Story, and now, they joined forces to save the project. The original directors were replaced; Lasseter would direct, and Unkrich would be the co-director.

The Braintrust rebuilt the story, adding two new characters that lent depth and urgency to the plot. With nine months left to deliver a film, the studio worked seven days a week. By completion, a third of the staff had sustained repetitive stress injuries to help the project meet its deadline; the film ultimately grossed over $500 million. 

During production, one exhausted employee was so overwhelmed that he briefly left his infant in a hot car; although the child recovered, Catmull took the incident as a sign that his team was dangerously overworked. Reasoning that good ideas come from good people, he restructured the development department to focus on finding and nurturing his team, and he also committed to protecting employees from their own tendency to overextend themselves.

He concluded that both of Pixar’s mantras had become empty of meaning. He and his team resolved to use the quality of their work as the foundation of their business plan, and Catmull would come to see Toy Story 2 as the crucible that formed Pixar’s tendency for honest self-scrutiny and determination to strive for high-quality storytelling and animation.