By pure coincidence, I recently listened to a 2008 interview of Ed Catmull, cofounder of Pixar and President of Pixar and Disney Animation on the topic of “Pixar and Collective Creativity”, by Harvard Business School IdeaCast.
The interview centered on mechanisms to foster innovation – for which Pixar is so famous. Ed Catmull’s emphasizes the importance of communication at and across all levels, and he constantly encourages anyone and everyone to share their thoughts, critique, and suggestions.
To this effect, he encourages all the teams at Pixar to have dailies: meetings at the end of the day where each of the animators shows to the rest of the team their accomplishments of the day, whether complete or not. This is a vulnerable moment where one has to show work in progress, warts and all, to colleagues (there’s always a bit a competitive spirit at work) and possibly Ed himself, if he happens to drop by. Yet, it is also a great opportunity to not only stimulate suggestions from one’s colleagues on how to improve one’s own work, but also to give ideas, or kick-start a brainstorm about the project in general, and other people’s work.
To me, the concept of dailies translates naturally to design reviews in the software development world, as I blogged a few days ago. I don’t necessarily advocate for daily design reviews, but certainly for frequent ones; most importantly early on, before foundational decisions are made, so as to actually benefit from the team’s suggestions.
Ed Catmull highlights another set of benefits of design reviews that are potentially even more powerful to foster team creativity (rather than just individual creativity) than simply having my design double-checked: my own work and ideas can inspire my colleagues, and the very process of reviewing my work can also stimulate brainstorming discussions about new concepts and ideas. This is powerful stuff!