
Pixar’s Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation  - jmorin007
http://foundread.com/2008/04/17/pixars-brad-bird-on-fostering-innovation/
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DocSavage
Lesson 10: Get Feedback, Edit, Repeat

Michael Arndt gave an interview at the recent Cinequest festival in San Jose.
He's the guy who wrote "Little Miss Sunshine" and now works at Pixar on the
next Toy Story.

The most interesting thing he said about Pixar was how they have a rigorous
testing process where they go through years of test, edit, shoot (generate)
iterations. It sounded like agile development applied to movie making, which
is only possible because Pixar does animation and reshoots are only limited by
money. Real-life shoots aren't as amenable to long iterative shooting
schedules because actors move on to other gigs or physically change.

"[Jobs] realized that when people run into each other, when they make eye
contact, things happen. So he made it impossible for you not to run into the
rest of the company."

There was a similar design criterion for the Clark Center
(<http://www.stanford.edu/home/welcome/campus/clark.html>). The only
staircases are wide ones on the outside that maximize chances of people
running into each other, as does the single restroom per section. And then
there's the coffee shop on the 3rd floor.

Software developers, on the other hand, might want an opposite environment so
they don't get distracted with random encounters.

~~~
pchristensen
Are you kidding? I'd love an environment like that, as long as I had a little
cave to retreat to. Knowing your coworkers casually is the best way to
increase communication bandwidth at work.

~~~
DocSavage
When I said software developers might want the opposite, I didn't mean that
they want crappy work spaces :) I meant an architecture built for increased
contacts means you don't have a cave from distractions. Many walls are glass
at Clark. If you go to the bathroom or down the stairs or to get a coffee, the
chances increase you'll run into others, even if you want to remain fixated on
a program. It's whether the workplace maximizes cross-talk for innovation vs
focus on implementation. Yeah, ideally you'd want both in the same workplace.
A coworker at Clark purposely created his cave by asking for a "worse" spot. I
could be convinced it's better to build the workspace for cross-talk and leave
it to people to make their own caves.

