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I was coming off a film called The Iron Giant that was a highly regarded financial failure. When I came here, they had made three movies- Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Toy Story 2-that had all been big hits. The Quarterly: What attracted you to Pixar?īrad Bird: One thing that was unbelievably different about this company was that they were worried about becoming complacent. Although stimulating the creativity of animators might seem very different from developing new product ideas or technology breakthroughs, Bird’s anecdotes should stir the imagination of innovation-minded executives in any industry. He also explained the value of “black sheep”-restless contributors with unconventional ideas. Bird discussed the importance, in his work, of pushing teams beyond their comfort zones, encouraging dissent, and building morale.
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Capozi, and Jonathan Davidson, “ Leadership and innovation,”, January 2008. Mendonca and Robert Sutton, “ Succeeding at open-source innovation: An interview with Mozilla’s Mitchell Baker,”, January 2008 and Joanna Barsh, Marla M. Readers interested in the relationship between innovation, organization, and leadership may also wish to read several other recent Quarterly articles: Joanna Barsh, “ Innovative management: A conversation with Gary Hamel and Lowell Bryan,”, November 2007 Lenny T. Ten days before Ratatouille won its Oscar, we sat down with Bird at the Emeryville, California, campus of Pixar, which is now a subsidiary of Disney. The veteran of Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, and FOX delivered-winning Academy Awards (best animated feature) for two groundbreaking movies, The Incredibles and Ratatouille. Concerned about complacency, senior executives Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter asked Bird, whose body of work included The Iron Giant and The Simpsons, to join the company and shake things up.
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Bird’s hands-on approach to fostering creativity among animators holds powerful lessons for any executive hoping to nurture innovation in teams and organizations.īird joined Pixar in 2000, when the company was riding high following its release of the world’s first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and the subsequent hits A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2. Exhibit One: Brad Bird, Pixar’s two-time Oscar-winning director.
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Senior executives looking for ideas about how to make their companies more innovative can also seek inspiration in surprising sources. Who could have predicted that bicycle mechanics would develop the airplane or that the US Department of Defense would give rise to a freewheeling communications platform like the Internet? If there’s one thing successful innovators have shown over the years, it’s that great ideas come from unexpected places.
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