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How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity

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Submitted By anantmahajan88
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● Pixar relies heavily on intrinsic motivation to motivate and inspire its employees, which is particularly important given the poor measurability of success before the film is released. It achieves high levels of intrinsic motivation through:
○ Meaningfulness – Skill variety is increased through Pixar University. By allowing staff to participate in the production discussions, it leads to task identity of their contribution to the whole project.
○ Responsibility – Autonomy is high: Incubation teams are responsible for operational decisions, while the “brain trust” only gives suggestions. Decentralization achieves increased individual autonomy, responsiveness to changing situations, and variety of ideas.
○ Knowledge of Results – Pixar uses post mortems and dailies to encourage feedback.
● Team and system are equally emphasized; Catmull emphasizes selecting smart people who provide good cognitive diversity and innovation to satisfy customer expectations of seeing something new every time they go to the theater. At the same time, Catmull emphasizes providing a system that gives them enormous leeway and support by providing honest feedback from everyone.
● Management sets ambitious goals and encourages employees to achieve them by taking appropriate risks. They design an environment conducive to risk taking, by employing systems and processes (e.g., sharing of unfinished ideas, emailing critiques) that yield a safe environment for employees to experiment with their ideas.
Suggestions:
● Pixar would do well to improve the internalization of its creative and open culture. Young talent suffer from the “awe of the institution syndrome” and often fail to speak up. Extrinsically rewarding newbies (ex. a new hire rewards system) who contribute, and in particular, challenge the status quo, may help to alleviate the problem. Pixar can also socially influence young talent

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