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saved by4 people, first byJorge Barba on 2008-04-16, last byDebby K on 2008-06-21

  • If there’s one thing successful innovators have shown over the years, it’s that great ideas come from unexpected places. Who could have predicted that bicycle mechanics would develop the airplane or that the US Department of Defense would give rise to a freewheeling communications platform like the Internet?



    Senior executives looking for ideas about how to make their companies more innovative can also seek inspiration in surprising sources. Exhibit One: Brad Bird, Pixar’s two-time Oscar-winning director. Bird’s hands-on approach to fostering creativity among animators holds powerful lessons for any executive hoping to nurture innovation in teams and organizations.



    Bird joined Pixar in 2000, when the company was riding high following its release of the world’s first computer-animated feature film, Toy Story, and the subsequent hits A Bug’s Life and Toy Story 2. Concerned about complacency, senior executives Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter asked Bird, whose body of work included The Iron Giant and The Simpsons, to join the company and shake things up. The veteran of Walt Disney, Warner Brothers, and FOX delivered—winning Academy Awards (best animated feature) for two groundbreaking movies, The Incredibles and Ratatouille.



    Ten days before Ratatouille won its Oscar, we sat down with Bird at the Emeryville, California, campus of Pixar, which is now a subsidiary of Disney.1 Bird discussed the importance, in his work, of pushing teams beyond their comfort zones, encouraging dissent, and building morale. He also explained the value of “black sheep”—restless contributors with unconventional ideas. Although stimulating the creativity of animators might seem very different from developing new product ideas or technology breakthroughs, Bird’s anecdotes should stir the imagination of innovation-minded executives in any industry.

  • The Quarterly: Do angry people—malcontents, in your words—make for better innovation? Can you be innovative and also happy?



    Brad Bird: I would say that involved people make for better innovation. Passionate involvement can make you happy, sometimes, and miserable other times. You want people to be involved and engaged. Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between—what they have in common is a restless, probing nature: “I want to get to the problem. There’s something I want to do.” If you had thermal glasses, you could see heat coming off them.

  • The Quarterly: Engagement, morale—what else is critical for stimulating innovative thinking?



    Brad Bird: The first step in achieving the impossible is believing that the impossible can be achieved. There was a point during the making of The Incredibles where we had a company meeting. We have them about twice a year, and anybody can bring up concerns. Somebody raised their hand and said, “Is The Incredibles too ambitious?” Ed Catmull said, “I don’t know” and looked over at me. I just said, “No! If there’s one studio that needs to be doing stuff that is ‘too ambitious,’ it’s this one. You guys have had nothing but success. What do you do with it? You don’t play it safe—you do something that scares you, that’s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. That’s what gets you up in the morning.”

  • I would say that involved people make for better innovation. Passionate involvement can make you happy, sometimes, and miserable other times. You want people to be involved and engaged.

  • The Quarterly: We’ve been talking a lot about how you promote innovation. What undermines it?



    Brad Bird: Passive-aggressive people—people who don’t show their colors in the group but then get behind the scenes and peck away—are poisonous. I can usually spot those people fairly soon and I weed them out.

  • The Quarterly: What kinds of leaders inhibit innovation?



    Brad Bird: When I first started at Disney, the old master animators were slowly leaving, and there was an animator in his 40s starting to direct films there; management was sort of grooming him to take over animation at the studio. Anyway, he had taken over a film and had a bunch of us meet in his office. The first thing that came out of his mouth was, “I’m here to teach you. I’m satisfied with what I do.” In that opening statement, he lost me because I had already worked with the old Disney masters—and they were never satisfied.



    It’s surreal to think about now, but my first real, formal teachers in animation were the best animators in the world. I’d started a film when I was 11, and a friend of the family knew the composer of the Disney films, who took me into the studio. I met a lot of the great old master animators. Their worst animation was 1,000 times better than this new director’s best, yet they would get to the end of a film and say, “I just started to feel like I was understanding the character, and I want to go back and do the whole thing over. Can’t wait for next time!” They were masters of the form, but they had the attitude of a student. This guy taking over the studio had only done a few pieces of pretty good animation, and he was totally satisfied. Could not have been less inspiring.

  • Passive-aggressive people—people who don’t show their colors in the group but then get behind the scenes and peck away—are poisonous. I can usually spot those people fairly soon and I weed them out.
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