Introduction
Typing the terms leadership and management in popular search engines would yield thousands of results. The truth is, in terms of availability of sources and literatures, the topic of leadership and management is one of the most heavily saturated. There are a lot of books and articles that have been published about it.
Yet despite that, only a small percentage of startups and aspiring business owners are being successful. Creativity Inc. is a book that discusses the story of how the company Pixar managed to make it big in the world of animation .
Discussions and Analysis
Pixar’s Distinctive Competence
For starters, Pixar is an American computer animation company that creates and develops its own line of computer generated imagery-based films. Among its most popular titles would be Wall-E, Finding Nemo, Toy Story, and Frozen. The company used to be the animation division of Lucas Films. It was later on acquired and incorporated by Apple Corporation under Steve jobs in 1986. Steve Jobs co-founded the new company.
The Walt Disney Company then bought the company in 2006. Creativity Inc.’s story is all about that of Disney’s Pixar, how it started out as a small computer animation studio into a full-pledged corporation that now makes the best of the best animated films in the planet.
The first question that one has to be able to answer would be what Pixar’s distinctive competence is, if any. There surely were many computer animation studios and even full-pledged corporations who devoted time and money to make it big in the industry. However, as history would suggest, none of them succeeded the same way the entity from Creativity Inc. did. This clearly is because of the presence of a certain characteristic that, it appears; only Pixar has—and this, in theory, would be its main distinctive competence.
If there is one distinctive competence that Pixar has as presented in its story in the book, it would be its ability to fully embrace change. It is important to note that there are a lot of clichés that one can use to describe Disney’s Pixar. Some of the most common examples would be its ability to run its people, to manage its resources properly, and to easily look for and spot signs of confusion and delusion and then resolve them as soon as possible. These features are not only ambiguous; they could also prove to be misleading especially for entrepreneurs who are still in the process of starting out their own venture.
Disney’s Pixar was set up at a time when people, even the very people working within the company, perceived computer generated imagery; much less animations and films, to be unprofitable, even a dead-end. Steve Jobs was one of the key people that revolutionized the way how people within the company thought and felt about computer animations.
He had the power to do so because he was the reason why the company did not go bankrupt; he managed to convince the people from his company to invest in Pixar and inject its units with fresh capital (i.e. money) to finance its projects. In exchange for financial and managerial backing, he convinced the people at Pixar to do something intense—to focus more on the creative side of their business which would be animating films.
He wanted to keep the people from the company’s creative divisions so busy to prepare them for big opportunities. Some of which were the animated commercials they made for Trident Gum and Tropicana orange juice, both of which they were able to complete with awards and commendations.
In order to give justification to this answer on what Pixar’s distinctive competence would be one only has to imagine what would have happened to Pixar had its previous leaders decided that they would be unwilling to embrace the chaos that went with their decision to make intense changes with the way how they did business.
The only theory that the author of this paper could come up with was failure. Pixar would have failed (most likely) had it decided to reject the radical ideas that Steve Jobs presented back when he was working to prepare people at Pixar to work with industry giants like Disney.
Had this been the case, the alliance between Pixar and Disney (something which only occurred as a result of Steve Jobs’ superb negotiation skills) would not have existed and popular titles that resulted from that marriage would not have been made such as Toy Story, arguably the most phenomenal computer animated film ever created.
Three Actions or Policies that were significant in Pixar’s Success
If there are going to be three actions or policies presented in Creativity Inc. (either directly or indirectly) that were particularly significant to Pixar’s success, they would be the following: 1) its decision to partner with Steve Jobs and yield to his directives even though they were so intense at times 2) the management’s decision to team up with Disney and enter into an alliance to create its first computer animated film, Toy Story, and 3) its overall ability to let the industry mold the company and embrace all the changes necessary.
Discussion on One Important Action or Policy
Among the three actions or policies that were enumerated, the one that deserves to be focused on in a separate discussion would be number 3 which described Disney’s Pixar’s overall ability to let the industry mold itself and embrace all the changes necessary. It was discussed and portrayed in various chapters.
For example, the first two chapters of the book talked about the history of Pixar and how problematic it was for the company to even survive; it also talked about Ed Catmull and his story. Basically, in those two chapters, he indirectly implied that there were a lot of changes that Disney’s Pixar had to undergo in order for it to become the Disney’s Pixar that people know today.
IKEA and other Companies’ Case
This policy also highlighted the most important part of doing a business, regardless of the industry, which is adaptability. Regardless whether a business operates in the filmmaking industry or whatnot, adaptability is important. A business that consistently fails to satisfy the needs, demands, expectations, and wants of the customers would always be doomed to fail. This is because no one would simply be willing to pay for the products and or services that that business would offer. That is the way how capitalism works.
Businesses exist to be of service to its customers or the consumers. There is no business that can go against this general rule except in situations where there is a monopoly or any active control or restriction of market powers. Moreover, customer demands and expectations, among other market-relevant factors and variables change from time to time and so businesses have to be sensitive when it comes to the timing of introducing strategic changes. Evidently, Pixar was one of the few companies that managed to do the right changes at the right time.
IKEA, an air express company, can also apply the same principles and distinctive competency to its situation. What it has to do is to be creative and innovative in its own way. It has to think of a way how it can offer more value to its customers without significantly affecting the cost of its products. The problem with this, however, is that not all companies are honest enough to accept the fact that some of their original ideas are not working the way they expected them to be. Pixar was honest enough to admit that certain changes were needed.
Candor also comes in play here. This is because it takes a great deal of honor and maturity to accept defeat, cut losses, and let other people help rebuild the company. This was detrimental to Pixar's success. This is mainly because had it decided not to embrace change, it would have been a complete failure.
All businesses are the same in that they all operate to satisfy the customers and one of the most effective ways to do so is to embrace change and innovation. That way, they would be able to see how a particular company values their business and how it uses the profits generated from customer sales to develop new and continuously improving products—which is what all customers, regardless of the business or demographic group and inclination want.
Works Cited
Wallace, A. and E. Catmull. "Creativity Inc. Overcoming the Unseen Forces that Stand in the Way of True Inspiration Summary." Random House Books (2014): 01-368. Print.
