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Brad Bird on Innovation

Great ideas come from the most unexpected places and no one knows this more than Brad Bird, Pixarâ€™s two-time Oscar-winning director.

A recent interview with Brad, carried out by the McKinsey Quarterly, really highlights the importance of innovation in order to achieve dramatically successful results. This is certainly true in the social sector where the status quo usually prevails…because it works, but where great opportunities to make a massive impact are often ignored due to the sector’s unwillingness to take risks.

Funnily enough, it was Pixar’s unwillingness to fall into this trap which was the reason behind Bird getting the job in the first place. Pixar was terrified of becoming complacentâ€¦and this was following a series of huge successes including Toy Story and A Bugâ€™s Life.

â€œSteve Jobs, Ed Catmull and John Lasseter said to me, â€œWe want you to come shake things up.â€ For a company that has had nothing but success to invite a guy who had just come off a failing film (The Iron Giant) and say, â€œGo ahead, mess with our heads, shake it upâ€ â€“ when do you run into that?â€

When he first presented the story reels for The Incredibles, the technical teams were shocked and were convinced that the film would take ten years, and $500 million, to make.

But true to Pixarâ€™s word, they let him do it his way. He involved the black sheep of the company, the oneâ€™s nobody was listening to because they wanted to do things differently, while the current methods worked just fine. He ended up spending less money per minute than the previous film, Finding Nemo.

â€œInvolved people make for better innovation. Involved people can be quiet, loud, or anything in-between â€“ what they have in common is a restless, probing nature.â€

“And morale is also essential for stimulating innovative thinking. â€œIf you have low morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about 25 cents of value. If you have high morale, for every $1 you spend, you get about $3 of value. Companies should pay much more attention to morale.â€

In order to raise morale in Pixar and stimulate a creative culture, employees are encouraged to do whatever they want to their office. One guy has a front like itâ€™s a Western town, another has designed his office to look like Hawaii.

Bird also encourages ambition and risk-taking within his team.

â€œWhen somebody asked me if The Incredibles was too ambitious. I said, No! If thereâ€™s one studio that needs to be doing stuff thatâ€™s â€œtoo ambitious,â€ itâ€™s this one.â€

â€œIf you are successful you shouldnâ€™t continue playing it safe. You need to do something that scares you, thatâ€™s at the edge of your capabilities, where you might fail. Thatâ€™s what gets you up in the morning.â€

Ashley Baldwin
Research & Communications
Marceloiniarra.com

To see this article in full, see The McKinsey Quarterly

This entry was posted on Thursday, November 13th, 2008 at 1:26 pm and is filed under Creativity, Home, Management Innovation. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.

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Brad Bird on Innovation

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