The article “How Pixar fosters collective creativity” explained the fascinating history of Pixar animation studio, and their work environment that inspired extraordinary contribution from employees and encouraged them to translate their imagination, creativity, and passion to produce something interesting over the years. Pixar has reinvented the art of animation and the technology behind it (Stallard, 2012). From the inception stage, Pixar was driven to provide an environment for work that enhanced maximum creativity, collaboration, and productive learning to make beautiful films.
I believe, this article is extremely useful for Technology and Innovation Management course as Pixar is the best example which signifies creativity, innovation, technology, and art is not a solo act rather it’s a team sport. The story of Pixar Studio illuminated us to be original. It accepted the uncertainty, even when it was uncomfortable and developed the capability to recover and bounce back when it took larger risks and faced failure (Catmull, 2016).
Pixar was the leading technological pioneer in the field of computer animation. Its crucial measures for constant success and creative organizational operation for 20 years and beyond represented the constant flow of good ideas along with lessons learned from previous mistakes. Pixar developed an incredible facility with mistakes where mistakes were no longer considered shameful, instead, they used to be shared among employees for inspiration and as a result, it fostered a fearless culture where colleagues were open and genuinely interested in each other success (Catmull).
Pixar exercised meticulous care to make sure whenever any mistake happened; it was safe for the company and employees to go through it. Their rituals as an organization were that after every major project they used to have the postmortem or technology fair where the entire organization gathered and used to grapple over their previous mistakes, lessons learned, discussed new ideas and technology, the company holistic approach was to establish a sustainable creative organization and everyone worked hard to achieve Pixar’s vision. (LaBarre, 2015).
Pixar is one of the world’s most famous animation studios, and it has an open and collaborative work culture where employees feel motivated, relaxed and creative at the same time. For any individual or organization to have such consistent success, they should believe in the systematic approach to innovation and not incidental approach. The collaboration between Disney and Pixar adds unique values to the product, and these two companies complement each other as their exclusive relationship produces more creative values for the consumers.
For any organization, to flourish and rise, the leadership should acknowledge the conditions for growth and adapt it. The significant challenge for management in today’s day and age is to develop a genuine culture of innovation which has an adaptive capacity and sustainability. The organization should encourage people to undertake the risks without the fear of failure. We should try more often risking our talent, believe in it and create conditions to prosper in one’s personal and professional life. Talent is rare, organizations need to focus more on the mindset as its more valuable and powerful than skillset in the long term. We should encourage more out of the box thinking in schools, colleges, industries, and creative ideas should be valued and rewarded by management in all the organizations. Everyone needs to understand that constant use and implementation of good ideas into practice leads to the ultimate innovation in the world.
