ABSTRACT
Chapter 27 maps and analyses the success story of Pixar Animation Studios, who have managed to combine major changes in technology with the art of great storytelling to their global advantage. As a case study following on from Chapter 26’s focus on creative management, the former president of Disney Animation, Ed Catmull, has demonstrated a transparent approach to cognitive bias, reflecting on Pixar’s past failures (1986–1996), and emphasising necessities of failure to improve & succeed. Pixar now follows some key principles, including: transparency, reflective leadership, communication & post-mortems. With priorities being primacy of people over ideas & quality of content, Pixar has had great success with recent titles such as Inside Out, The Good Dinosaur & Soul. The chapter delves more deeply into the question: how can project managers ‘see’ effectively in order to capture value and learn? And how can they best continuously apply that learning? How can their leadership and understanding of cognitive bias impact on the project management process and the overall culture of an organisation? How can mangers think actively and progressively about the challenge of what is ‘obscured from view’ when managing projects and leading creative organisations? Finally, we consider the question: can we find evidence that Pixar’s leadership team’s way of thinking and acting on the above challenges has creative a positive, reflexive relationship to the company’s project management’s skills and consistent capture of value?
