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kaitgrau8's review against another edition
4.0
Interesting read for anyone becoming a manager in their career. Also really enjoyed the anecdotes about my favorite Pixar movies!
iplexor's review against another edition
adventurous
funny
hopeful
informative
inspiring
lighthearted
reflective
medium-paced
4.75
swicksy's review against another edition
5.0
Reading this book, it is easy to see why Pixar, and now Walt Disney Animation Studios, have been so successful. Ed Catmull outlines a work environment where creativity and ideas are king, the employee culture is vibrant and mistakes are allowed to happen - frequently - because growth comes from working with those mistakes rather than yelling, screaming and going on witch hunts. I have no doubt that within the walls of Pixar/Disney there are still employee egos and situations where mistakes do become hot-target issues, but Catmull's overall view of management is one that should be read by all.
You can say it is easy to present these ideas when your company (Pixar) has been so extremely successful and the fact that they own all their products (and reading it, Pixar's culture infuses Walt Disney Animation with success even though Disney is the parent and in a sense, overlord company, Pixar comes off as the ones who change their culture rather than vice versa) but you can't write off their overall results making Catmull's idea worthy of attention.
You can say it is easy to present these ideas when your company (Pixar) has been so extremely successful and the fact that they own all their products (and reading it, Pixar's culture infuses Walt Disney Animation with success even though Disney is the parent and in a sense, overlord company, Pixar comes off as the ones who change their culture rather than vice versa) but you can't write off their overall results making Catmull's idea worthy of attention.
emjayknocks's review against another edition
informative
reflective
slow-paced
2.5
I really wanted to like this book - it’s been recommended to me by so many people and I love Pixar films, so it seemed like an easy win. Sadly, it was not. Although there are amusing anecdotes and interesting Pixar tidbits, it’s buried in so much rambling business gumpf that I struggled to latch onto anything I could even recall later… much less put into practice in my own work managing creative teams. At the end of the day it’s a business book like all the rest; it holds up management ideas that have had success as The AnswersTM, and I struggle to hear the surety presented in chapter after chapter as anything more than chest thumping from C-suite level dudes.
zeroone's review against another edition
5.0
I don't usually read leadership and management books, but this was a great start into the genre. (Not that I intend to continue on it, but you never know.)
Pixar is as a subject of its own very interesting. After all, they've been succeeding in making nothing but hit movies for over two decades now. In this book Ed Catmull details how their internal culture works and how it has enabled their success. The book is also peppered with interesting anecdotes regarding the topics at hand, both from the point of view of Pixar and the Disney animation studio.
The first few dozen pages detail Catmull's work history in order to set the scene. He is an engineer by his training and heart, and basically everything that he and his peers did in the university in 1960s and 1970s regarding computer graphics was groundbreaking, as they were, in essence, inventing the field on the fly.
Then follows the beef of the book, and at the end there's an equally interesting afterwords chapter titled "The Steve we knew" that dives into the persona of Steve Jobs, who was also a major player at Pixar, as experienced by Ed Catmull who worked closely with Steve for 26 years.
Pixar is as a subject of its own very interesting. After all, they've been succeeding in making nothing but hit movies for over two decades now. In this book Ed Catmull details how their internal culture works and how it has enabled their success. The book is also peppered with interesting anecdotes regarding the topics at hand, both from the point of view of Pixar and the Disney animation studio.
The first few dozen pages detail Catmull's work history in order to set the scene. He is an engineer by his training and heart, and basically everything that he and his peers did in the university in 1960s and 1970s regarding computer graphics was groundbreaking, as they were, in essence, inventing the field on the fly.
Then follows the beef of the book, and at the end there's an equally interesting afterwords chapter titled "The Steve we knew" that dives into the persona of Steve Jobs, who was also a major player at Pixar, as experienced by Ed Catmull who worked closely with Steve for 26 years.
nguyen_vy's review against another edition
adventurous
hopeful
informative
inspiring
medium-paced
4.0