by Matthew Syed
Winners require innovation and discipline, the imagination to see the big picture and the focus to perceive the very small. “The great task, rarely achieved, is to blend creative intensity with relentless discipline so as to amplify the creativity rather than destroy it,” Collins writes. “When you marry operating excellence with innovation, you multiply the value of your creativity.”19
IV
Let us conclude our study of creativity by looking at Pixar, an animation company that draws together many of these strands. As an institution it has almost no peers in its reputation for innovation. When Ed Catmull, the company’s long-serving president, wrote his autobiography he entitled it Creativity Inc.
Pixar blockbusters include Toy Story, Monsters, Inc., and Finding Nemo. The films have generated an average worldwide gross of over $600 million. They have been critical successes, too, winning Oscars in multiple categories. Toy Story and Toy Story 2 both received 100 percent scores on Rotten Tomatoes.
Naturally Pixar has a lot of clever, creative people working in its offices. Lead authors come up with terrific story lines for the latest film. They are presented to the wider group at large meetings. They are often applauded afterward. A good storyline is an act of creative synthesis: bringing disparate narrative strands together in novel form. It is a crucial part of the Pixar process.
But now consider what happens next. The story line is pulled apart. As the animation gets into operation, each frame, each strand of the story, each scene is subject to debate, dissent, and testing. All told, it takes around twelve thousand storyboard drawings to make one ninety-minute feature, and because of the iterative process, story teams often create more than 125,000 storyboards by the time the film is actually delivered.
Monsters, Inc. is a perfect illustration of a creative idea adapted in the light of criticism. It started off with a plot centered on a middle-aged accountant who hates his job and who is given a sketchbook by his mother. As a child he had drawn some monsters in the sketchbook and that night they turn up in his bedroom, but only the accountant can see them. These monsters become the fears he had never confronted, and over time he learns to understand them, and thus overcome them.
The final version, which would wow the world (and take $560 million at the box office), is rather different. It tells the story of Sulley, a rather unkempt monster, and his unlikely friendship with a little girl nicknamed Boo. Over the period of the film’s development it was altered in the light of criticism and the testing of ideas. Even after the main protagonist had changed to a little girl rather than a middle-aged accountant, the plot continued to evolve. Catmull has written:
The human protagonist was a six-year-old named Mary. Then she was seven, named Boo, and bossy—even domineering. Finally Boo was turned into a fearless, preverbal toddler. The idea of Sulley’s buddy character—the round, one-eyed Mike, voiced by Billy Crystal—wasn’t added until more than a year after the first treatment was written. The process of determining the rules of the incredibly intricate world Pete [the director of the film] created also took him down countless blind alleys—until eventually those blind alleys converged on a path that led the story where it needed to go.20
Toy Story 2 is another archetype of the Pixar creative process. Just a year out from its theatrical release, the narrative was not right. The story is about whether Woody, a toy cowboy, will leave the pampered life he enjoys on the shelf of a collector to go back to Andy, whom he loves. The problem is that this is a Disney movie, and so the audience knows at the outset that it will have a happy ending: Woody will reunite with Andy.
“What the film needed were reasons to believe that Woody was facing a real dilemma, and one that viewers could relate to. What it needed, in other words, was drama,” Catmull writes in his memoir. With the clock ticking, the process of iteration took on an urgent feel. People were working overtime, late into the night, testing ideas.
One artist turned up at work with his small child, intending to take him to day care, but forgot. After he had been at work a couple of hours, his wife phoned to ask how the drop-off had gone. Suddenly he realized that he’d left the child in the boiling-hot parking lot. They rushed out and poured cold water on the unconscious child. Thankfully he was OK, but the episode revealed how stretched the staff had become.
Hundreds of small changes were made to the film. Dozens of larger changes were made too. There was also one major alteration to the plot: the story had always started with Woody suffering a rip in his arm that meant Andy left him behind when going to cowboy camp. At this point there was a decision to add a new character.
“[We] added a character named Wheezy the penguin, who tells Woody that he has been on that same shelf for months because of a broken squeaker,” Catmull says. “Wheezy introduces the idea early on that no matter how cherished, when a toy gets damaged, it is likely to be shelved, tossed aside—maybe for good. Wheezy, then, establishes the emotional stakes of the story.”
The plot now had real tension. Will Woody stay with someone he loves, knowing he will eventually be discarded, or choose a world where he can be pampered forever? It is a theme with high crossover and moral seriousness. Ultimately, Woody chooses Andy but in the foreknowledge that the decision will lead to future unhappiness. “I can’t stop Andy from growing up,” he says to Stinky Pete. “But I wouldn’t miss it for the world.”
Catmull says:
Early on, all of our movies suck. That’s a blunt assessment, I know, but I . . . choose that phrasing because saying it in a softer way fails to convey how bad the first versions of our films really are. I’m not trying to be modest or self-effacing by saying this. Pixar films are not good at first, and our job is to make them go . . . from suck to non-suck . . .
We are true believers in the power of bracing, candid feedback and the iterative process—reworking, reworking and reworking again, until a flawed story finds its throughline or a hollow character finds its soul.
Does this sound familiar? It is an almost perfect description of the dissent guidelines in the Nemeth experiment.
It is sometimes said that testing may be important for engineers and hard items like vacuum cleaners, nozzles, and curtain rods, but it doesn’t apply to soft, intangible problems like writing novels or scripts for children’s animations. In fact, iteration is vital for both. It is not an optional extra; it is an indispensable aspect of the creative process.
Consider what happened when Pixar considered abandoning its iron discipline; when they tried to go from epiphany to final product in one large, mystical leap. “This then became our goal—finalize the script before we start making the film,” Catmull writes about Finding Nemo. “We were confident that locking in the story early would yield not just a phenomenal movie but a cost-efficient production.”
It didn’t work. The initial idea by Andrew Stanton, one of Pixar’s most respected directors, was about an overprotective clownfish called Marlin, looking for his son. His pitch to the team was superb. “The narrative, as he described it, would be intercut with a series of flashbacks that explained what had happened to make Nemo’s father such an overprotective worrywart when it came to his son,” Catmull writes. “He seamlessly wove together two stories: what was happening in Marlin’s world, during the epic search after Nemo is scooped up by a scuba diver, and what was happening in the aquarium in Sydney, where Nemo had ended up with a group of tropical fish called ‘the Tank Gang.’”
The response in the room was one of stunned admiration. But once the creative blueprint was put into production, flaws began to emerge. The flashbacks proved confusing to test audiences. Marlin seemed unlikable because it took so long to see why he had been so overprotective. When Michael Eisner of Disney saw the rough cut he was not impressed. “Yesterday we saw for the second time the next Pixar movie Finding Nemo. It’s OK, but nowhere near as good as their previous films.”
At this point Pixar reverted to disciplined ite
ration. First they adapted the narrative to a more chronological approach—and it began to align. The tale of the Tank Gang became a subplot. Other changes, smaller, but cumulatively significant, began to emerge. By the end, the film had gone from suck to non-suck. Catmull writes:
Despite our hopes that Finding Nemo would be the film that changed the way we did business, we ended up making as many adjustments during production as we had on any other film we had made. The result, of course, was a movie we’re incredibly proud of, one that went on to become the highest grossing animated film ever.
The only thing it didn’t do was transform our production process.21
V
Dyson, Catmull, and the other innovators we have encountered offer a powerful rebuke to the way we conventionally think about creativity. To spark the imagination and take our insights to their fullest expression, we should not insulate ourselves from failure; rather, we should engage with it.
This perspective does not only have large implications for innovation, it also has direct implications for the way we teach. Today education is conceived as providing young people with a body of knowledge. Students are rewarded when they apply this knowledge correctly. Failures are punished.
But this is surely only one part of how we learn. We learn not just by being correct, but also by being wrong. It is when we fail that we learn new things, push the boundaries, and become more creative. Nobody had a new insight by regurgitating information, however sophisticated.
Dyson says:
We live in a world of experts. There is nothing particularly wrong with that. The expertise we have developed is crucial for all of us. But when we are trying to solve new problems, in business or technology, we need to reach beyond our current expertise. We do not want to know how to apply the rules; we want to break the rules. We do that by failing—and learning.
Dyson advocates that we provide children with the tools they need not just to answer questions, but to ask questions. “The problem with academia is that it is about being good at remembering things like chemical formulae and theories, because that is what you have to regurgitate. But children are not allowed to learn through experimenting and experience. This is a great pity. You need both.”
One of the most powerful aspects of the Dyson story is that it evokes a point that was made in chapter 7; namely, that technological change is often driven by the synergy between practical and theoretical knowledge. One of the first things Dyson did when he had the insight for a cyclone cleaner was to buy two books on the mathematical theory of how cyclones work. He also went to visit the author of one of those books, an academic named R. G. Dorman.22
This was hugely helpful to Dyson. It allowed him to understand cyclone dynamics more fully. It played a role in directing his research and gave him a powerful background on the mathematics of separation efficiency. But it was by no means sufficient. The theory was too abstract to lead him directly to the precise dimensions that would deliver a functional vacuum cleaner.
Moreover, as Dyson iterated his device, he discovered that the theory had flaws. Dorman’s equation predicted that cyclones would only be able to remove fine dust down to a lower limit of 20 microns. But Dyson quickly broke through this theoretical limit. By the end, his cyclone could separate dust smaller than 0.3 micron (this is approximately the size of the particles in cigarette smoke). Dyson’s practical engagement with the problem had forced a change in the theory.
And this is invariably how progress happens. It is an interplay between the practical and the theoretical, between top-down and bottom-up, between creativity and discipline, between the small picture and the big picture. The crucial point—and the one that is most dramatically overlooked in our culture—is that in all these things, failure is a blessing, not a curse. It is the jolt that inspires creativity and the selection test that drives evolution.
Failure has many dimensions, many subtle meanings, but unless we see it in a new light, as a friend rather than a foe, it will remain woefully underexploited. Andrew Stanton, director of Finding Nemo and WALL-E, has said:
My strategy has always been: be wrong as fast as we can . . . which basically means, we’re gonna screw up, let’s just admit that. Let’s not be afraid of that. But let’s do it as fast as we can so we can get to the answer. You can’t get to adulthood before you go through puberty. I won’t get it right the first time, but I will get it wrong really soon, really quickly.
As our conversation draws to a close, I wonder why Dyson still comes into his office every day, rather than enjoying his wealth. “A lot of people ask me that. They seem to assume that I spend my life with my feet up,” he says, smiling.
But the answer is simple: I love the creative process. I love coming in here every day and testing new ideas. We have plans for many new products in the coming years.
But we are also still developing the vacuum cleaner. We didn’t stop at the 5,127th prototype, you know. Today, we have forty-eight cyclone technology, which spins the dust at 200,000 Gs. It exerts a huge centrifugal force, which is why it can separate the tiniest particles. But even this isn’t the end. What excites me most is that we are still only at the beginning.
Part V
THE BLAME GAME
Chapter 11
Libyan Arab Airlines Flight 114
I
It is February 1973. The atmosphere in the Middle East is like a tinderbox. More than five years earlier in the Six-Day War between Israel and forces from Egypt, Jordan, and Syria there were more than 20,000 fatalities, mostly on the Arab side. In just eight months’ time, the Yom Kippur War will take place, leading to another 15,000 deaths. Tensions are on a hair-trigger.
Just weeks earlier, Israel has received intelligence that Arab terrorists are planning to hijack a commercial airliner in order to crash it into a densely populated area, probably Tel Aviv, or into the nuclear installation at Dimona. The Israeli Air Force is on high alert.
At 13:54 on February 21, a commercial airliner is picked up by Israeli radar crossing the Gulf of Suez into the Israeli war zone. It is following a “hostile” trajectory, the same as the one flown by Egyptian warplanes. Is it merely off course? This is possible, given that Egypt and the Sinai peninsula have been engulfed by a sandstorm, reducing external visibility. But Israeli commanders want to be sure. At 13:56, Israeli F-4 Phantoms are dispatched to intercept the airliner.1
Three minutes later the Phantoms reach the plane and confirm that it is a Libyan airliner. Flying alongside the jet they can see the Libyan crew through the window of the cockpit. The commanders at base are immediately suspicious. If the plane was destined for Cairo, it is more than seventy miles off course. Moreover, the Libyan state is a well-known sponsor of international terrorism. Could this be a hostile threat?
The Israelis are concerned about something else too. When flying toward Sinai, the airliner crossed some of the most sensitive areas of Egyptian airspace, and yet wasn’t intercepted by Egyptian MiG fighter aircraft. Why? Egypt has a highly efficient early-warning system. They, like Israel, are acutely sensitive about their airspace being breached. Just a few months earlier, an Ethiopian passenger jet that had inadvertently veered into their war zone, was shot down and destroyed. Why has there been no response from the Egyptians?
The commanders in Tel Aviv become ever more confident that this is not an ordinary passenger jet, but is flying a military mission with the explicit consent of their enemies in Cairo. Tensions at the command center are starting to rise.
The Israeli pilots are ordered to instruct the Libyan airliner to land at the Rephidim airbase (today called the Bir Gifgafa airfield) before it can reach the heart of Israel. The Phantoms do this by rocking their wings and communicating the instruction by radio. The Libyan crew should acknowledge the request by rocking their wings in response and opening radio channels. They do neither. Instead they continue on their course toward Israel.
The Phantoms
are in no doubt that the instruction was received. One Israeli pilot flew to within a few meters of the airliner and looked directly into the eyes of the co-pilot. He hand-gestured for the plane to land and the co-pilot responded with hand signals of his own, indicating that he had understood the instruction. And yet now the airliner is continuing on its trajectory toward Israel.
It doesn’t make sense, unless . . .
At 14:01 the Phantoms are ordered to fire tracer shells in front of the nose of the airliner to force it to land. At last the airliner responds. It turns toward the Rephidim airbase, descends to 5,000 feet and lowers its landing gear. But then, without warning, it suddenly turns back toward the west, as if trying to escape. It revs up its engines and begins to ascend.
The Israelis are baffled. The first duty of a captain is to insure the safety of his passengers. Surely, if that is his objective, he must land the plane.
The Israelis now suspect that the airliner is trying to escape at any cost. They begin to wonder if there are any passengers actually on board the jet. At 14:05 the Israeli pilots are instructed to look through the windows of the passenger cabin. They report that all the window shades are down. But this is strange too. Even when a movie is playing, some of the shades are usually up.
The Israelis are now near certain that this is a hostile plane, probably without passengers on board. It must be forced to land, not least to deter future incursions of the same kind.
At 14:08 shots are fired at the wingtips of the airliner and yet it still defies the instruction to land. Finally, at 14:10, the Phantoms shoot at the base of the wings, forcing it down. The pilot very nearly makes a successful crash-landing in the desert below, but after skidding for 600 meters the plane hits a sand dune and explodes.