In the process of our trying to blaze a trail to an Anywhere future of ubiquitous connectivity, I often look for inspiration from others who have followed their own dreams and made a mark on the world. So I was happy to find an interview with just such a person online recently.

To set up what this person has achieved, try to name a US company that only released 8 products in the last 15 years, yet had every single one of those 8 products generate at least $350 million in revenue. Said another way, this company has never had a single product fail during the last 15 years in an industry where such failures are expected routinely.

That company of course is Pixar, and those achievements are why I found this interview that McKinsey Quarterly (registration required) did with
Pixar’s Brad Bird particularly interesting. Bird was one of the developers of The Simpsons half-hour shows before he joined Pixar, and since that time, he has gone on win two Academy Awards for his work on The Incredibles and Ratatouille. But he wasn’t always so successful. And in the interview, Bird discusses how a company that has never had a product fail hired him right after a project that hadn’t gone so well:

“One thing that was unbelievably different about this company was that they were worried about becoming complacent. When I came here, they had made three movies—Toy Story, A Bug’s Life, and Toy Story 2—that had all been big hits. I was coming off a film called The Iron Giant that was a highly regarded financial failure.”

“Steve Jobs, Ed Catmull, and John Lasseter said, in effect, “The only thing we’re afraid of is complacency—feeling like we have it all figured out. We want you to come shake things up. We will give you a good argument if we think what you’re doing doesn’t make sense, but if you can convince us, we’ll do things a different way.” For a company that has had nothing but success to invite a guy who had just come off a failure and say, ‘Go ahead, mess with our heads, shake it up’—when do you run into that?”

Bird later notes that Pixar doesn’t just pay lip service to shaking things up. In fact, he attributes a lot of Pixar’s innovation to the fact that people are committed to take big chances:

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.”

Now, you may think that this “doing the impossible” culture means that everyone is always on the same page about doing doing whatever it takes to make the highest quality product. Bird disabuses us of that fiction; Pixar’s brilliant products are forged in conflict, not calm cooperation:

My producer, John Walker, and I are famous for fighting openly, because he’s got to get it done and I’ve got to make it as good as it can be before it gets done. If you look at the extra materials on The Incredibles DVD, there’s a moment where we’re fighting about something, and John says, “Look, I’m just trying to get us across the line.” And I say, “I’m trying to get us across the line in first place.”

I don’t want him to tell me, “Whatever you want, Brad,” and then we run out of resources. I want him to tell me, “If you do X, we’re not going to be able to do Y.” I’ll fight, but I’ll have to make the choice. I love working with John because he’ll give me the bad news straight to my face. Ultimately, we both win. If you ask within Pixar, we are known as being efficient. Our movies aren’t cheap, but the money gets on the screen because we’re open in our conflict. Nothing is hidden.

I started this piece extolling Pixar’s business success, but Bird ends the interview noting that business success is a byproduct of his efforts, not his goal.

Speaking personally, I want my films to make money, but money is just fuel for the rocket. What I really want to do is to go somewhere. I don’t want to just collect more fuel.

So don’t get complacent, try to do the impossible, encourage dissent, and let the journey be the reward. Those are good imperatives for innovation and the road to Anywhere. And they aren’t bad ones for life either.