Creativity without Fear: The Pixar Way
This is story 7 of my 5,000-story project.
Pixar has produced two dozen films since the animation studio was founded in 1986. Almost all of its movies — such as Toy Story, Inside Out, and Incredibles — became instant blockbusters.
While Pixar spends millions of hours[1] on each movie attending to every detail, perfectionism does not guide its creative process.
On the contrary, every day Pixar shows unfinished work internally to the whole company to discourage a culture of perfectionism.
This practice helps teams get over the embarrassment of sharing incomplete work. It liberates people to take risks, try new things, and inspire each other with constructive feedback.
Creativity blossoms when we stop worrying about failure.
[1] Fun fact: Pixar has “600 people working on a movie for 3–4 years.” If we assume 2,000 work hours per year x 600 people x 3 years, that’s ~3.6 million man-hours.
In other words, it takes the equivalent of a single person working 24 hours non-stop for over 400 years to produce a Pixar movie. Yet another way to look at it: each minute on screen for a two-hour film takes ~30,000 hours behind the scene.
