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Now, sure, he has to commit to budgets and timeframes but if he really wants something you have to figure it's going to happen.
And of course, he's not the top manager, the CEO equivalent in charge of the studio itself — Ed Catmull is. And yes, everything creative gets picked apart by other directors so it's not like he's the only voice.
But you'd have to say John Lasseter has more power than anyone at Pixar, assuming you wanted to look at things that way.
You could also say he's the creative heart of Pixar.
It's sure nice that those two things match up.
Edit: I explored this subject in my Quora answer on Pixar, Valve and Blizzard for those interested.
http://www.quora.com/What-are-some-commonalities-in-how-Pixa...
'Ive wants to spend more time in the UK where he wants his sons to go to school, the Times claims, but the Apple board has refused to support his relocation. The story quotes a family friend as saying that "they have told him in no uncertain terms that if he headed back to England he would not be able to sustain his position with them".'
From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/feb/28/apple-j...
Sounds to me like HP-level stupidity from the Apple board.
Well, not THAT much power: 'Ive wants to spend more time in the UK where he wants his sons to go to school, the Times claims, but the Apple board has refused to support his relocation. The story quotes a family friend as saying that "they have told him in no uncertain terms that if he headed back to England he would not be able to sustain his position with them".' From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/f…
Well, not THAT much power: 'Ive wants to spend more time in the UK where he wants his sons to go to school, the Times claims, but the Apple board has refused to support his relocation. The story quotes a family friend as saying that "they have told him in no uncertain terms that if he headed back to England he would not be able to sustain his position with them".' From: http://www.guardian.co.uk/technology/pda/2011/f…
And the true tabloid Daily Mail actually interviewed some of Ive's friends and they all said never heard of such a desire from Jony Ive himself.
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/home/moslive/article-1367481/Appl...
It staggers me that time and time again Apple lays out the reasons for it's unrivalled success for all to see, yet non of it's rivals seem interested in copying their methods and opt for simply copying their products. Fortune favours the brave.
A big reason for this is that what Apple does is very, very _hard_. It's really hard to build physical objects with design good enough to be featured in museums. It's really hard to build your own software ecosystem, from operating system to software distribution to entertainment services. It's hard enough just to do them; it's extremely hard to be great at them. Even if other companies _wanted_ to replicate Apple's…
True, it's hard, but not that hard. These guys did it on a regular basis: http://www.lushpad.com/articles.php?id=16&pag=1
The true reason as you point out is organizational and it is the same as that age-old killer of creativity: fear. The subordinates are afraid of doing something the boss does not want. The boss is not pushing ahead either because he/she is afraid of making decisions that may entail risk.
By comparison, John Lasseter has more power than anyone at Pixar. I think the situation could be similar. Now, sure, he has to commit to budgets and timeframes but if he really wants something you have to figure it's going to happen. And of course, he's not the top manager, the CEO equivalent in charge of the studio itself — Ed Catmull is. And yes, everything creative gets picked apart by other directors so it's not…
Earlier quoted context omitted.
Not promoting someone because they're too good at their current job is a mistake bad companies make.
There's a difference between not promoting someone from lead code monkey, and not promoting someone from head of industrial design at Apple. The latter is a valid landing point for the rest of your life.
Great, but... Ive only does industrial design, as far as I know. The other side of the coin is the software, and if that declines, Ive's going to be creating very well-designed paperweights. So who does Apple's software design?
Apple’s current industrial design patterns seem to have a solid foundation in quite traditional modernist values, such as ‘truth to materials’, so for instance you would never see Apple ship a product with a plastic case coated to look like brushed aluminium. They would always use real aluminium.
It seems the software design team isn’t grounded in quite the same set of principles as the industrial design team.
I do wonder if the ID guys would rather see their designs running an interface such as WP7 (or even Plan 9, xMonad etc.), which isn’t as tied to real world metaphors and in a sense show more ‘truth to software’ (or to put it another way, there is certainly no ’true’ interface for digital information, but if there were one… I can’t imagine faux leather would be it.)