I was reading back through the interview that we did with Academy award winning director Brad Bird for The McKinsey Quarterly last year, and came on this wonderful quote from Brad about his boss at Pixar, John Lasseter. I found it when searching on the word "quality" in the transcription, and realized that during the 90 or so minute interview we did with Bird, "quality" and "ideas" were terms that he used over and over, sometimes together and sometimes separately. And when he talked about money, he emphasized that, although it was necessary, no matter how much money you throw at an idea, if the concept is flawed in the first place, you end-up with high quality but dull movies — which had helped cause the decline of the Disney Animation studios. As Bird described his brief career there: "I went to Disney at time where they were doing really beautiful quality of really boring ideas. That was right after the great masters had left and I basically got fired for, quote, rocking the boat."
Interesting stuff. And a reminder that the greatest innovators are willing to fight for their ideas, something I have been worrying is stifled in these tough times, that innovation and entrepreneurship are slowing down. I did feel a little better the other day when a sharp Stanford student argued to me that, since jobs are so hard to come by, he figured it was a great time to start his own company. He also figured that the stigma of failure is at an all-time low, because it is happening so widely. How is that for a twisted but weirdly logical reason to take a big risk? He figures that if he succeeds in this economy, people will be REALLY impressed, and if he fails, well, it won't reflect badly on him at all because so many great companies and people are struggling.
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