The phrase “To Infinity and Beyond” entered global lexicon in November 19, 1995 with the premiere of “Toy Story” by Pixar. The film was received with wide acclaim, numerous awards and eventually became a high grossing film globally. The importance of this film is that it was the first full length computer animated feature film. The movie ushered in the age of “digital animation or 3D animation” into the mainstream and accelerated the scale of the computer animation industry. At that stage, critics praised digital animation and a number of them went to the extreme to forecast the death of hand drawn animation. Amidst the noise; the company continued churning creative high grossing films, expanded and eventually acquired + merged with Disney under the joint leadership of Ed Catmull, John Lassiter and Steve Jobs. Through those years they’ve proven that their success was not simply because of the ground breaking technology they developed ... it goes beyond.

I believe the Pixar company holds a wealth of wisdom that are leverageable lessons. Certain lessons I believe are applicable to companies navigating a technological disruption - a timely topic given the rise of generative AI. Some of my take-aways:

1.Define the essence and value of the company: 
Being crystal clear about the goal and vision of any undertaking is strategically critical. Exposed to the excitement around novel technology, it is easy for leaders to lose focus or get distracted especially if there is ambiguity or lack of alignment within the organization on the company’s true value to the market as well as the role of the new technology within this context. A scenario most likely today as leaders would be grappling with the noise around generative A.I. aside from other advancement in digital platforms. The task of leaders in such situations is to focus and filter discussions in service of the vision of the organization.

Pixar in its infancy had options of either becoming a hardware company or a creative company. In fact in the early days they dabbled with selling computers with their graphic-rendering technology. The leaders however did not relent on the intent of developing full animation feature films and becoming a full pledged creative studio. With this clarity, Pixar continued improving and refining the technology but in the service of “story telling” and not the other way around.

2.“Partner” with the technology experts:
With the risk of simplifying things, organizations usually have two paths to choose from when introducing technology or embarking on initiatives involving technology. They either empower the talents - subject matter experts (SMEs) brought in to respond to a business goal/question or take another path where a group of incumbents in the organization partner with the SMEs in “co-creating and developing” a response to a collectively built-owned business goal/question. I believe that the later has more merit in situations when the technology is more intertwined to an organization’s success or accomplishment of its vision as well as when the technology potentially impacts multiple operational processes. In context of generative AI, I believe that the range of potential application as well as process interdependencies deserves active partnership and co-creation to ensure it is properly scoped, adapted and scaled in the organization.  

John Lasseter has this famous quote on how Pixar operates – “Art challenges technology, technology inspires art”. If you look at the processes involved in developing an animation film at Pixar, one would realize that at all stages in the process there is “active engagement” between the creative team with the digital scientist. Hand drawn sketches and illustrations, paintings, mixed media art for colour scripts and even hand sculptures are produced aside from story boards and written scripts. These creative output becomes the stimulus for inspiration and discussion between the creatives and the scientist as they find ways for the technology to bring the work to life digitally whilst eliciting the same range of emotion one feels when viewing art or going through a narrative. It’s not baton passing, the creatives seat “side by side” all the way.

3. An Integrated Culture reflective of the importance of Each Department:
One would assume that with the IOT (Internet of things) and the big data era that the importance of technical talents (ex. Data Scientist and IT) in the organization would be elevated to a point where they are embedded in most organizational initiatives or at a minimum consulted. That however is not the case in some organizations as they are treated more as an “after thought” when developing strategies and initiatives. There are even instances that this group is blindsided when other departments go out of the system to work with digital companies. With generative AI in the horizon, it heightens the urgency to establish a culture that embraces the technical teams as true partners in building a competitive business. This also opens up opportunities to even look at the organizational structure and processes to further enable such culture to thrive.

The insights from Pixar in this context is the culture they’ve developed and the equitable acknowledgement of other talents aside from the computer scientist. From the articles and books written about Pixar and their leaders, it could be surmise that the business was managed fairly and equitably amongst the leaders and departments. Steve Jobs was quoted in the book by Karen Paik – “We’ve always looked at the studio as having four legs to it. The creative leg, the technical leg, the production leg, and the business leg. And the heads of all these parts of the company work together as a team, to make sure that we are building the best studio in the world”. Ed Catmull writes in his book – “ One of the advantages we had at Pixar, from the beginning, was that technology, art and business were integrated into the leadership, with each leaders – me, John, and Steve – paying a fair attention to the areas where we weren’t considered expert.  Our business model, our way of making films, and our technology continually changed, but by integrating them we let them drive each other. The impetus for innovation, in other words, came from the inside rather than the outside.”

The approach they’ve taken entails an authentic effort from the leaders of each team to understand, appreciate and respect each ones role as well as responsibilities. Each department has a “seat in the corporate table”; weighing in equitably when it counts. To nurture and protect this collaborative culture, the leaders intentionally built opportunities and systems in the company – from the physical layout and structure of their office to their training programs to the regular cross functional meetings.

As everyone braces for the effect of unlocking generative AI to human and organization performance, it is best to seek insights from companies that have tackled such shifts and thrived. Best yet is finding companies that are able to sustain and re-invent itself on each shift. Looking inwards alone would not be able to prepare the organization for a frontier that is rapidly changing. I encourage you to look at the fringes beyond your usual benchmarks to get inspired and hopefully get excited in riding that next wave of change.

Sources used in this article:  Creativity Inc. by Ed Catmull and ; To Infinity and Beyond by Karen Paik