Ed Catmull is Pixar Animation Studios’ cofounder and president. In a conversation with HBR’s Gardiner Morse, Catmull discusses the sources of his inspiration and how Pixar fosters its creative community. These excerpts of the interview were edited for clarity.
You and a handful of other visionaries virtually invented the field of computer graphics. Was it animation or computers that first got you interested?
When I was in high school in the early 1960s, I wanted to be an animator and even took art classes. But by the time I was in college, I realized I couldn’t draw well enough. I did have an aptitude for science, though, so I switched into physics and computer science. In the early 1970s, I headed to graduate school at the University of Utah and joined the pioneering program in computer graphics because I realized that’s where I could combine my interests in art and computer science. Jim Clark, who founded Netscape and Silicon Graphics, and John Warnock, who founded Adobe, were also in my class—it was quite a creative stew. At the time, computer graphics were almost all black and white. Everything was made up of polygons. But my goal early on was to get to the point where you could use the technology for feature films.
So, you were looking at these primitive, black-and-white line drawings on the screen and thinking “feature animation”?
Oh, yes. It was clear to me even then. But after I finished my dissertation and began looking for work, there were no computer graphics jobs. I knew what I wanted to do, but no studio was interested. Neither were research sites. The problem was, graphics technology at the time was fairly crude, and most people would look at it and judge it by what they saw. They couldn’t imagine what it would become. Finally, in 1974, I got a call from the New York Institute of Technology and was asked to head up the computer graphics program there. Five years later, when George Lucas was working on The Empire Strikes Back, he recruited e to start up the computer division of Lucasfilm. Steve Jobs bought the division from George in 1986, and we founded Pixar. Unlike most people in the industry, Steve understood the potential of computer graphics for animation. Steve, cofounder John Lasseter, and I shared that vision.
How confident were you that Pixar could achieve your vision, back when it was a struggling little company?
Until you get there, you really don’t know. Sometimes a leap of faith doesn’t pan out. But there have been many times when people who work for me have told me that a project was possible, and I’d look at the problem and say, “I don’t think so.” And they’d come back at me with this fervor and explain why they thought I was wrong and why they should go ahead with it. That’s precisely when you want to let them go ahead. The very act of doubting them, and then letting them proceed, motivates them to go ahead and prove that they’re right.
How did you keep the staff motivated during those lean early years, before the Academy Awards started rolling in?
