Edwin Catmull Quotes

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Edwin Catmull

Profession : Scientist

Birth : March 31, 1945

One of the effects Pixar University has on the culture is that it makes people less self-conscious about their work and gets them comfortable with being publicly reviewed.

Edwin Catmull

I've certainly seen R&D groups, typically funded by large corporations, where they bring together a lot of smart people and nothing happens. And the reason nothing happens is that they don't have a clear goal.

Edwin Catmull

If you want people to be let loose, you can't over-control them.

Edwin Catmull

Throughout Pixar's history, we've had major meltdowns and crises. It's happened throughout our history: you reach a certain point, it doesn't work, and you start all over again.

Edwin Catmull

When you take a director off a project, that makes a person feel humiliated because everyone knows it. But we're responsible because we put them in that position.

Edwin Catmull

What I've learned running Pixar applies to all businesses.

Edwin Catmull

For me, the work we did to turn around 'Toy Story 2' was the defining moment in Pixar's history.

Edwin Catmull

We've always had ups and downs at Pixar, starting with the high we felt doing something we'd never done - 'Toy Story' - and the low we felt right after when we realized we'd messed a bunch of things up along the way.

Edwin Catmull

People say they want to be in risky environments and do all kinds of exciting stuff. But they don't actually know what risk means: that risk actually does bring failure and mistakes.

Edwin Catmull

Part of being the successful Pixar is that we will take risks on teams and ideas, and some of them won't work out. We only lose from this if we don't respond to the failures. If we respond, and we think it through and figure out how to move ahead, then we're learning from it. That's what Pixar is.

Edwin Catmull

With certain ideas, you can predict commercial success. So with a 'Toy Story 3' or a 'Cars 2,' you know the idea is more likely to have financial success. But if you go down that path too far, you become creatively bankrupt because you're just trying to repeat yourself.

Edwin Catmull