I would sit by Hamza and Anya’s bedside and read them the story of The Velveteen Rabbit. There is something magical about that dialogue that stayed with me long after they would have fallen asleep:

“What is REAL?” asked the Rabbit one day. “Does it mean having things that buzz inside you and a stick-out handle?”

“Real isn’t how you are made,” said the Skin Horse. “It’s a thing that happens to you. When a child loves you for a long, long time, not just to play with, but REALLY loves you, then you become Real.”

“Does it happen all at once, like being wound up,” he asked, “or bit by bit?”

“It doesn’t happen all at once,” said the Skin Horse. “You become. It takes a long time. That’s why it doesn’t often happen to people who break easily, or have sharp edges, or who have to be carefully kept.”

Reading Ed Catmull’s “Creativity, Inc.,” I find myself thinking back to those bedtime readings. The way the rabbit becomes real through a long process of being loved, played with, and sometimes even damaged mirrors how every great creative work comes to life. Pixar’s masterpieces don’t emerge fully formed and perfect. Instead, like the rabbit, they start out stiff, awkward, and uncertain. The early versions of Toy Story, Finding Nemo, or Up would appear just as “unreal” as a stuffed toy rabbit dreaming of becoming real. But through months of relentless work, through countless iterations and revisions, through being pulled apart and stitched back together, these rough beginnings slowly transform into something authentic and beautiful.

Consider Toy Story, now celebrated as a groundbreaking masterpiece. In its early stages, Woody was a vindictive puppet, the other toys were lifeless automatons, and the story had no heart. Like the Velveteen Rabbit before its transformation, it was just a collection of parts that hadn’t yet become “real.” The film’s journey to excellence wasn’t about a sudden flash of brilliance. It was about years of patient work, of being “loved” by its creators who refused to settle for something that wasn’t authentic.

This is the story Catmull shares in “Creativity, Inc.” - not just about Pixar’s triumphs, but about the messy, uncertain process of creating something genuine. Like the wise old Skin Horse explains, becoming real isn’t about being perfectly made or carefully preserved. It’s about embracing the difficult journey of transformation, about being willing to have your fur rubbed off, your edges softened, and your initial form completely reworked in service of creating something truly authentic.

What Did I Get Out of It

Ed Catmull spent forty years building and running Pixar. This book isn’t just a collection of management advice - it’s a detailed examination of how Pixar works, fails, learns, and creates. Here are the key lessons that changed how I think about leading creative teams and building something meaningful.

Great Work Starts Ugly

The most powerful insight in Creativity, Inc. is that masterpieces don’t emerge fully formed. Every great film, product, or idea begins in an unfinished, messy state. As Catmull states directly:

“Early on, all of our movies suck. That’s a blunt assessment, I know, but I make a point of repeating it often, and I choose that phrasing because saying it in a softer way fails to convey how bad the first versions of our films really are.”

This isn’t just about movies. It’s about the creative process itself. Catmull calls these early versions “ugly babies,” explaining:

“Originality is fragile. And, in its first moments, it’s often far from pretty. This is why I call early mock-ups of our films ‘ugly babies.’ They are not beautiful, miniature versions of the adults they will grow up to be. They are truly ugly: awkward and unformed, vulnerable and incomplete. They need nurturing—in the form of time and patience—in order to grow.”

The challenge isn’t just accepting that early work is ugly - it’s protecting that ugliness long enough for it to become something beautiful. This requires three things:

First, you must resist comparing early work to finished products. As Catmull notes:

“The natural impulse is to compare the early reels of our films to finished films—by which I mean to hold the new to standards only the mature can meet. Our job is to protect our babies from being judged too quickly.”

Second, you must be willing to sit with discomfort. Innovation requires accepting that you won’t know the end result when you begin. Catmull emphasizes:

“If you’re sailing across the ocean and your goal is to avoid weather and waves, then why the hell are you sailing? You have to embrace that sailing means that you can’t control the elements and that there will be good days and bad days and that, whatever comes, you will deal with it because your goal is to eventually get to the other side.”

Third, you must commit to the long process of iteration. Quality isn’t about getting it right the first time - it’s about having the persistence to keep improving. As Catmull explains:

“Making the process better, easier, and cheaper is an important aspiration, something we continually work on—but it is not the goal. Making something great is the goal.”

This principle transformed how Pixar works. Rather than expecting perfection, they built systems that embrace the mess. They spend years in development, where costs are low and experimentation is possible. They show work early and often, even when it’s embarrassing. They trust that excellence comes through iteration, not initial brilliance.

The implications go far beyond filmmaking. Whether you’re writing, building a product, or starting a company, the lesson is the same: don’t expect your first version to be good. Instead, focus on creating an environment where early ideas can be ugly, where feedback helps rather than hurts, and where people have the time and safety to transform those ugly beginnings into something remarkable.

As Catmull concludes:

“Part of our job is to protect the new from people who don’t understand that in order for greatness to emerge, there must be phases of not-so-greatness.”

Candor Is Essential

While most companies claim to value honesty, Catmull makes a crucial distinction. He deliberately chooses the word “candor” over “honesty” because it carries different implications:

“Candor is forthrightness or frankness—not so different from honesty, really. And yet, in common usage, the word communicates not just truth-telling but a lack of reserve.”

At Pixar, candor isn’t just encouraged - it’s systematically built into the culture through what they call the Braintrust. Catmull explains:

“The Braintrust, which meets every few months or so to assess each movie we’re making, is our primary delivery system for straight talk. Its premise is simple: Put smart, passionate people in a room together, charge them with identifying and solving problems, and encourage them to be candid with one another.”

What makes the Braintrust unique is that it has no authority. The director doesn’t have to follow any of its suggestions. This is crucial because:

“While problems in a film are fairly easy to identify, the sources of those problems are often extraordinarily difficult to assess. Think of it like a patient complaining of knee pain that stems from his fallen arches. If you operated on the knee, it wouldn’t just fail to alleviate the pain, it could easily compound it.”

The Braintrust works because it focuses on problems, not solutions. As Catmull notes:

“A good note says what is wrong, what is missing, what isn’t clear, what makes no sense. A good note doesn’t make demands; it doesn’t even have to include a proposed fix.”

But creating a culture of candor isn’t easy. It requires constant vigilance against the natural human tendency to avoid uncomfortable truths. Catmull warns:

“If there is more truth in the hallways than in meetings, you have a problem.”

The fear of speaking up, of offending someone, or of being retaliated against never completely goes away. These fears must be actively countered:

“Candor isn’t cruel. It does not destroy. On the contrary, any successful feedback system is built on empathy, on the idea that we are all in this together, that we understand your pain because we’ve experienced it ourselves.”

Perhaps most importantly, candor requires separating people from their ideas:

“This principle eludes most people, but it is critical: You are not your idea, and if you identify too closely with your ideas, you will take offense when they are challenged. To set up a healthy feedback system, you must remove power dynamics from the equation.”

The results of building this culture speak for themselves. As Catmull concludes:

“Telling the truth is difficult, but inside a creative company, it is the only way to ensure excellence. In a fear-based, failure-averse culture, people will consciously or unconsciously avoid risk. They will seek instead to repeat something safe that’s been good enough in the past. Their work will be derivative, not innovative.”

Fear and Failure Are Part of the Process

Most companies try to avoid failure at all costs. Pixar takes the opposite approach. As Catmull explains:

“Failure isn’t a necessary evil. It is a necessary consequence of doing something new.”

This isn’t just empty rhetoric. At Pixar, this philosophy is embodied by Andrew Stanton, who repeatedly tells his teams to “fail early and fail fast” and “be wrong as fast as you can.” He explains it this way:

“You wouldn’t say to somebody who is first learning to play the guitar, ‘You better think really hard about where you put your fingers on the guitar neck before you strum, because you only get to strum once, and that’s it. And if you get that wrong, we’re going to move on.’ That’s no way to learn, is it?”

The problem isn’t just that we fear failure - it’s that trying to avoid failure actually makes failure more likely. Catmull observes:

“In a fear-based, failure-averse culture, people will consciously or unconsciously avoid risk. They will seek instead to repeat something safe that’s been good enough in the past. Their work will be derivative, not innovative.”

But acknowledging that failure is necessary isn’t enough. Leaders must actively make it safer to fail. As Catmull notes:

“It is not the manager’s job to prevent risks. It is the manager’s job to make it safe to take them.”

This requires a fundamental shift in how we think about mistakes. Instead of trying to prevent them, we should focus on our response:

“Rather than trying to prevent all errors, we should assume, as is almost always the case, that our people’s intentions are good and that they want to solve problems. Give them responsibility, let the mistakes happen, and let people fix them.”

The goal isn’t to eliminate fear - that’s impossible in high-stakes situations. Instead:

“My goal is not to drive fear out completely, because fear is inevitable in high-stakes situations. What I want to do is loosen its grip on us. While we don’t want too many failures, we must think of the cost of failure as an investment in the future.”

This approach requires trust - not just in good times, but especially when things go wrong:

“Trust doesn’t mean that you trust that someone won’t screw up—it means you trust them even when they do screw up.”

The payoff of this philosophy is that it enables true innovation. When people aren’t paralyzed by the fear of failure, they can take the risks necessary to create something truly original. As Catmull concludes:

“While experimentation is scary to many, I would argue that we should be far more terrified of the opposite approach. Being too risk-averse causes many companies to stop innovating and to reject new ideas, which is the first step on the path to irrelevance.”

Problems Are Hidden

One of Catmull’s most striking insights is that leaders are often blind to their organization’s biggest problems. After the success of Toy Story, he discovered something unsettling:

“I discovered we’d completely missed a serious, ongoing rift between our creative and production departments. In short, production managers told me that working on Toy Story had been a nightmare. They felt disrespected and marginalized—like second-class citizens.”

This revelation led to understanding:

“The good stuff was hiding the bad stuff. I realized that this was something I needed to look out for: When downsides coexist with upsides, as they often do, people are reluctant to explore what’s bugging them, for fear of being labeled complainers.”

The challenge of hidden problems becomes even more acute with success. As Catmull notes:

“Success convinces us that we are doing things the right way. There is nothing quite as effective, when it comes to shutting down alternative viewpoints, as being convinced you are right.”

This blindness isn’t just about organizational issues. It’s built into the nature of leadership itself:

“As managers, we all start off with a certain amount of trepidation. When we are new to the position, we imagine what the job is in order to get our arms around it, then we compare ourselves against our made-up model. But the job is never what we think it is.”

The solution isn’t to try to see everything - that’s impossible. Instead, Catmull advocates for:

“If we accept that we can’t understand every facet of a complex environment and focus, instead, on techniques to deal with combining different viewpoints… If we start with the attitude that different viewpoints are additive rather than competitive, we become more effective because our ideas or decisions are honed and tempered by that discourse.”

This requires active effort. Leaders must:

“Be wary of making too many rules. Rules can simplify life for managers, but they can be demeaning to the 95 percent who behave well. Don’t wait for things to be perfect before you share them with others. Show early and show often. It’ll be pretty when we get there, but it won’t be pretty along the way.”

Most importantly, leaders must accept that their view will always be incomplete:

“If we don’t acknowledge how much is hidden, we hurt ourselves in the long run. Acknowledging what you can’t see—getting comfortable with the fact that there are a large number of two-inch events occurring right now, out of our sight, that will affect us for better or worse… But to be truly humble, those leaders must first understand how many of the factors that shape their lives and businesses are—and will always be—out of sight.”

People Over Ideas

Catmull challenges conventional wisdom by asserting that people matter more than ideas. His position is clear:

“If you give a good idea to a mediocre team, they will screw it up. If you give a mediocre idea to a brilliant team, they will either fix it or throw it away and come up with something better.”

This isn’t just theory - it’s a fundamental principle that shaped how Pixar operates:

“Getting the team right is the necessary precursor to getting the ideas right. It is easy to say you want talented people, and you do, but the way those people interact with one another is the real key. Even the smartest people can form an ineffective team if they are mismatched.”

The implications of this principle are profound. As Catmull explains:

“Ideas come from people. Therefore, people are more important than ideas. Why are we confused about this? Because too many of us think of ideas as being singular, as if they float in the ether, fully formed and independent of the people who wrestle with them. Ideas, though, are not singular. They are forged through tens of thousands of decisions, often made by dozens of people.”

This focus on people extends to how you hire and build teams:

“When looking to hire people, give their potential to grow more weight than their current skill level. What they will be capable of tomorrow is more important than what they can do today. Always try to hire people who are smarter than you. Always take a chance on better, even if it seems like a potential threat.”

This principle was put to the test early in Catmull’s career when he hired Alvy Ray Smith. The decision represented a crucial turning point in his understanding of leadership:

“I had conflicting feelings when I met Alvy because, frankly, he seemed more qualified to lead the lab than I was… I can still remember the uneasiness in my gut, that instinctual twinge spurred by a potential threat: This, I thought, could be the guy who takes my job one day. I hired him anyway.”

The result of this decision transformed not just the team, but Catmull’s entire approach to leadership:

“The act of hiring Alvy changed me as a manager: By ignoring my fear, I learned that the fear was groundless… Over the years, I have met people who took what seemed the safer path and were the lesser for it.”

This moment marked a fundamental shift in Catmull’s understanding of what it means to lead. Instead of seeing leadership as being the smartest person in the room, he learned that true leadership means having the confidence to hire people smarter than yourself and help them flourish. As he puts it:

“The obvious payoffs of exceptional people are that they innovate, excel, and generally make your company—and, by extension, you—look good. There is another, less obvious, payoff that only occurred to me in retrospect.”

This philosophy requires ongoing attention to team dynamics:

“It isn’t enough merely to be open to ideas from others. Engaging the collective brainpower of the people you work with is an active, ongoing process. As a manager, you must coax ideas out of your staff and constantly push them to contribute.”

The ultimate goal isn’t just to have talented individuals, but to create an environment where they can flourish:

“Find, develop, and support good people, and they in turn will find, develop, and own good ideas.”

Balance Is Better Than Control

Throughout Creativity, Inc., Catmull challenges the notion that tight control leads to better outcomes. Instead, he advocates for something more nuanced - balance. As he explains:

“Healthy cultures and healthy companies are not stable. They are ever-changing. And that change requires that leaders need to remain vigilant and nimble and, above all, that they make sure that core values are protected.”

This philosophy manifests in how Pixar approaches creative work:

“I often say that managers of creative enterprises must hold lightly to goals and firmly to intentions. What does that mean? It means that we must be open to having our goals change as we learn new information or are surprised by things we thought we knew but didn’t. As long as our intentions—our values—remain constant, our goals can shift as needed.”

At the heart of this philosophy is a deep understanding of randomness. Catmull observes:

“Randomness has been studied extensively by mathematicians, scientists, and statisticians; it is deeply embedded in everything we do. We talk about lucky breaks, good days and bad days, crazy coincidences, fortune smiling upon us, or being in the wrong place at the wrong time… Yet randomness remains stubbornly difficult to understand.”

The problem is that our brains are wired to resist this randomness:

“We can store patterns and conclusions in our heads, but we cannot store randomness itself. Randomness is a concept that defies categorization; by definition, it comes out of nowhere and can’t be anticipated.”

This creates a paradox in how we view success:

“When companies are successful, it is natural to assume that this is a result of leaders making shrewd decisions. Those leaders go forward believing that they have figured out the key to building a thriving company. In fact, randomness and luck played a key role in that success.”

The challenge is maintaining balance in an organization that’s constantly growing and changing:

“The healthiest organizations are made up of departments whose agendas differ but whose goals are interdependent. If one agenda wins, we all lose.”

This requires rejecting the comfort of stability:

“Do not accidentally make stability a goal. Balance is more important than stability.”

Catmull warns against confusing process with purpose:

“Don’t confuse the process with the goal. Working on our processes to make them better, easier, and more efficient is an indispensable activity and something we should continually work on—but it is not the goal. Making the product great is the goal.”

Most importantly, this philosophy requires letting go of the illusion of control:

“This is the puzzle of trying to understand randomness: Real patterns are mixed in with random events, so it is extraordinarily difficult for us to differentiate between chance and skill. As we try to learn from the past, we form patterns of thinking based on our experiences, not realizing that the things that happened have an unfair advantage over the things that didn’t.”

The key is to embrace this uncertainty rather than fight it:

“Fear makes people reach for certainty and stability, neither of which guarantee the safety they imply. Rather than fear randomness, I believe we can make choices to see it for what it is and to let it work for us. The unpredictable is the ground on which creativity occurs.”

The payoff of this approach is an organization that can truly innovate:

“We would be a company that would never settle. That didn’t mean that we wouldn’t make mistakes. Mistakes are part of creativity. But when we did, we would strive to face them without defensiveness and with a willingness to change.”

Who Is This For

While Creativity, Inc. appears on the surface to be about building an animation studio, its real value lies much deeper. Yes, there are fascinating insights into Pixar’s history, Steve Jobs’ leadership, and the intricacies of running a creative enterprise. But these are merely the backdrop for something far more valuable - a framework for thinking about creative work itself.

This isn’t just a book for CEOs or creative directors. It’s for anyone who faces the challenge of making something that doesn’t yet exist. Whether you’re writing a novel, building a startup, developing software, or trying to solve complex problems in any field, Catmull’s insights about embracing uncertainty, protecting new ideas, and building an environment where creativity can flourish are invaluable.

What makes this book special is that it doesn’t pretend to give you a formula. Instead, it provides mental models for approaching creative work. It helps you understand that the messy, uncertain feeling you have when starting something new isn’t a sign that you’re doing it wrong - it’s a necessary part of the creative process. It shows you that the goal isn’t to eliminate problems but to build an environment where it’s safe to face them honestly.

Most importantly, it’s a book about the human side of creativity. Through Catmull’s experiences, we learn that great work doesn’t come from genius ideas or rigid processes, but from creating spaces where talented people can be honest, take risks, and help each other excel.

If you’re looking for step-by-step instructions on how to be creative, you won’t find them here. But if you want to understand what it really takes to build something extraordinary - the mindset, the culture, the approach to problems - this book is essential reading. It’s a reminder that while we can’t control creativity, we can create the conditions that allow it to flourish.