Creativity, Inc.: Overcoming the Unseen Forces That Stand in the Way of True Inspiration

This is the story of Pixar, from one of the founders. It reads like a standard business history until the second part, where he gets into some of the specific things they did at Pixar, especially during and after the acquisition by Disney.

But, here’s the thing: how much is your business like Pixar? That’s a pretty specialized company that does some weird work. I don’t know how much would transfer anywhere else.

That said, a lot of the advice is super-evergreen, and stuff you’ve no-doubt read in other books:

• Always hire people who are smarter than you
• A good team will fix a mediocre idea, but a mediocre team will ruin a good idea
• If there’s more truth in the hallways than the meetings, you have a problem
• When hiring, give me emphasis to how much you think they can learn, rather than how much they know
• It’s not the manager’s job to prevent risks, it’s their job to make it safe to take risks (which, honestly, strikes me as the same thing, but whatever…)

So, this is a fairly mainstream business book – and that’s not a bad thing. But if you grew up with Pixar movies and you enjoy creativity, you’ll like the book. The stories are interesting, and you’ll learn a lot about what happened behind-the scenes (some of the journeys that the plots took are pretty wild).

Also, if you like Steve Jobs or Apple, then this is a great book for you. Obviously, Jobs was heavily involved with Pixar, and there are a lot of stories about him. The author even has an entire chapter at the end which refutes some of the more notorious stories about him, though the book is otherwise unsparing – it’s like at the end the author thought, “I was too hard on Steve, I need to write something nice to end it with.”

It’s a solid book about management in any industry that creates something. I work in software, and I found a lot to relate to.