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Brad Bird on Fostering Innovation

Animation Brad Bird Interview News Pixar Steve Jobs

The McKinsey Quarter interviewed Brad Bird on innovation recently, and Gigaom have provided a run down of the article for us. 

There are 9 lessons in total on fostering innovation. These include, "Herd your Black Sheep", "Perfect is the enemy of innovation", and "High morale makes creativity cheap". One bit I found particularly interesting is this on Pixar HQ:

Then there’s our building. Steve Jobs basically designed this building. In the center, he created this big atrium area, which seems initially like a waste of space. The reason he did it was that everybody goes off and works in their individual areas. People who work on software code are here, people who animate are there, and people who do designs are over there. Steve put the mailboxes, the meetings rooms, the cafeteria, and, most insidiously and brilliantly, the bathrooms in the center—which initially drove us crazy—so that you run into everybody during the course of a day. [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.

Check out hte rest over at Gigaom. Thanks Jan.

Last modified: April 29, 2008