Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration (2014) is a business memoir by Edwin E. Catmull, a co-founder of Pixar Animation Studios. Using his career as a framework, Catmull outlines his philosophy on how to build a sustainable creative culture. The book traces his path from a computer science student with a dream of making the first computer-animated feature film to his leadership roles at Pixar and, later, at Walt Disney Animation Studios. As he details the challenges and breakthroughs behind his team’s most iconic films, Catmull explores The Benefits of Prioritizing People over Ideas, the challenges of Fostering Creativity without Sabotaging Production Demands, and Failure as a Catalyst for Innovation. 

Co-written with journalist Amy Wallace, Creativity, Inc. became a New York Times bestseller and was widely read in business and management circles. Catmull published an expanded edition in 2023, adding new material reflecting on the years before his 2019 retirement. Catmull is a seminal figure in computer graphics, having pioneered key technologies such as texture mapping. For his revolutionary impact on computer-generated imagery in filmmaking, Catmull has been recognized with five Academy Awards, as well as the A.M. Turing Award, which is often called the Nobel Prize of computing.

This guide refers to the 2023 hardcover Expanded Edition published by Random House.

Language Note: The source text’s title and content features ableist metaphors that equate physical blindness with a conceptual lack of awareness. While guide itself avoids reproducing this language, the imagery does appear in several direct quotes taken from Creativity, Inc.

Summary

Ed Catmull, co-founder and longtime president of Pixar Animation Studios, traces the arc of his career from a boyhood dreamer with a love for Disney animation to a leader of Pixar Animation Studios, one of the most successful creative enterprises in history. Throughout the memoir, he uses his life’s journey to explore how various hidden forces and social dynamics can impede creativity, and he outlines a variety of ways in which leaders can combat these issues. Creativity, Inc. was first published in 2014 and then updated in 2023. In the new version, Catmull adds new chapters and postscripts reflecting the life lessons that he learned in the years just before his 2019 retirement.

Growing up in Salt Lake City in the 1950s, Catmull idolized both Walt Disney and Albert Einstein, as these men represented the twin poles of invention and explanation. He dreamed of becoming an animator but could not discern a logical path toward this goal, so instead he pursued physics and computer science at the University of Utah, where he studied under Ivan Sutherland, a pioneer of interactive computer graphics. The department, which was funded by ARPA (the Advanced Research Projects Agency, a US government initiative created after the Soviet launch of the Sputnik satellite), fostered a collaborative, mutually supportive research culture that Catmull later sought to replicate. By his mid-20s, he set a new goal: to make the first computer-animated feature film.

After earning his doctorate in 1974, Catmull took a series of formative positions. At the New York Institute of Technology, he assembled a research team and hired the talented Alvy Ray Smith, realizing that by surrounding himself with people who were smarter than he was, he would create a more successful team. In 1979, filmmaker George Lucas hired Catmull to lead a computer division at Lucasfilm, where the team built the Pixar Image Computer and developed digital filmmaking tools. However, when Lucas’s film editors resisted adopting them, Catmull learned that good ideas can never be fully realized without the confidence of the people expected to use them.

A pivotal moment came in 1983, when a young Disney animator named John Lasseter visited Lucasfilm and was galvanized by its work with computer graphics. Shortly after this meeting, Lasseter was fired from Disney for pitching a project that was too edgy and experimental for the company’s tastes. Catmull recruited him, and Lasseter’s storytelling instincts transformed Pixar’s first short film, proving that audiences care more about emotional engagement than visual polish. In 1986, when Lucas decided to sell the computer division, Steve Jobs (who had recently been ousted from Apple), bought it for $10 million and at the behest of Catmull and his team, named it Pixar. Jobs’s goal was for Pixar to focus solely on producing and selling the Pixar Imaging Computer.

The early years were grueling. Pixar hemorrhaged money, and Jobs sank over $50 million into the company before it pivoted from selling hardware to Catmull’s original passion: creating computer animation. Around this time, Catmull discovered the work of W. Edwards Deming, the American statistician who had revolutionized Japanese manufacturing by empowering every employee to halt the assembly line and fix problems. Toyota’s policy became foundational to Catmull’s own management philosophy. In 1991, Disney executive Jeffrey Katzenberg proposed a deal for Pixar to make feature films. Production began on Toy Story, but after Katzenberg pushed the team to make the protagonist Woody more mean-spirited, Disney shut down the project in 1993. Lasseter and his team spent months rediscovering the film’s heart, and when Toy Story finally debuted on November 22, 1995, it became the highest-grossing film of the year, revolutionizing the industry.

For Catmull, the triumph was bittersweet. Having spent 20 years pursuing the goal of a computer-animated feature, he felt adrift. He resolved that his new mission would be to build a sustainable creative culture at Pixar, one that identifies and addresses the hidden forces that undermine even the most successful organizations.

The crisis of Toy Story 2 forged Pixar’s identity. Initially planned as a direct-to-video sequel, the project was upgraded to a theatrical release, but early reels were disastrous. Lasseter took over as director, and the Braintrust, a feedback group that had emerged organically during Toy Story, reconceived the story. The nine-month production push nearly broke the staff; a third of the crew developed repetitive stress injuries. Catmull vowed never again to let ambition override employee well-being and realized that focusing on the team matters more than getting the right idea, because ideas come from people.

Catmull devotes the book’s middle sections to the principles and mechanisms that Pixar developed to protect creativity. He argues for fostering an atmosphere of “candor,” creating a space that allowed for the constructive critique of films in progress. This approach ultimately allowed everyone involved in a film to contribute to its storyline and overall quality. Catmull explains that at Pixar, a group called the Braintrust serves as a crucial mechanism for promoting such candor in the creative process. Smart, passionate filmmakers gather to diagnose problems in films under development, but the director retains final decision-making power. Removing the authority to mandate solutions enables participants to focus on the problem without egos hindering progress.

Catmull then redefines failure as a useful part of the creative process, citing a story from Pixar’s early days, when a promising idea about endangered newts stalled because its team could not move past hypotheticals. Rather than viewing the shutdown as a waste, Catmull emphasizes that his team learned to require directors to follow the “Three Pitches Rule” and develop three ideas before committing to one. This approach prevented them from getting fixated on a single idea. He also introduces the tension between the metaphorical “beast” (an organization’s insatiable need for output) and the “ugly baby” (a fragile new idea in its earliest, most imperfect form). He notes that balancing the two is a dynamic, never-ending challenge.

In 2006, Jobs proposed selling Pixar to Disney. Catmull and Lasseter were initially shocked but agreed after meeting new Disney CEO Bob Iger, who promised to protect Pixar’s culture. Catmull and Lasseter took charge of both studios but kept Pixar completely separate from Disney Animation. At Disney, Catmull realized that a fear-driven culture had been stifling directors, so he eliminated the oversight group, remodeled the building to signal transparency, and helped to create a Disney version of the Braintrust, called the Story Trust. With the implementation of this and other positive changes, Disney Animation eventually produced Tangled (2010), its first number one hit in 16 years.

In March 2013, Pixar held Notes Day, shutting down the studio for a day so that all employees could discuss existential issues such as rising costs and cultural erosion. Over the course of 171 sessions, employees raised concerns that went far beyond budgets, revealing frustrations about career development, lack of feedback, and declining candor. The expanded edition tracks the multi-year impact. Catmull and his team implemented a group of “Peer Pirates”—individuals whose job is to surface hidden problems. Pixar also started the Story Artistas, a mentoring group designed to nurture female filmmakers, and Dr. Britta Wilson was hired as Pixar’s first vice president of inclusion strategies. The casting system was also overhauled to give department heads greater control over fostering their employees’ career trajectories.

Catmull also addresses painful failures of candor. He acknowledges Lasseter’s 2018 departure from Pixar following revelations about his habit of initiating unwanted physical contact with employees; Catmull admits that he should have uncovered the problem sooner, but he declines to reveal the full details of why Lasseter ultimately left the company. He then goes on to reveal his own aphantasia (the inability to hold visual images in the mind), and he uses this discovery to reinforce his conviction that creative work is ultimately enriched by diversity of all kinds, including cognitive diversity.

Catmull relates that as his retirement approached, he delivered farewell talks organized around three principles: making great films, creating an environment in which employees feel safe in taking creative risks, and valuing change and technology. The book’s afterword offers a personal portrait of Steve Jobs, who died in October 2011; in this section, Catmull argues that the prevailing narrative of Jobs as an unchanging, difficult genius misses the deeper story: that Jobs changed profoundly over 26 years, becoming more empathetic, wiser, and kinder. At a company-wide memorial in the building that Jobs designed, Pixar director Andrew Stanton called Jobs “the creative firewall” (425), and Lasseter, in tears, said, “Thank you. I love you, Steve” (426).