The MWS Podcast 32: Ed Catmull, President of Pixar and Disney Animation on Creativity.

In this latest member profile, Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation talks about his new book Creativity Inc.,  the finding of the ‘Middle’ and how one sets up the conditions in a work environment so that creativity might flourish. He goes on to explain how he tries to maintain a work/life balance and why he decided to join the Middle Way Society.

If you’d like to read a review of ‘Creativity Inc’ by the chair of the society Robert M. Ellis, then click here.


MWS Podcast 32: Ed Catmull as audio only:
Download audio: MWS_Podcast_32_Ed_Catmull

Click here to view other podcasts

About Barry Daniel

I live in the Lake District in the UK where I run a guesthouse with my partner Kate and my cat Manuel. I enjoy painting, hillwalking, reading, visiting and entertaining friends, T’ai Chi and playing the guitar. I’m engaged to a certain degree in the local community, as a volunteer with Samaritans and I’m a fairly active member of the local Green party. I’ve had a relatively intuitive sense of the Middle Way most of my adult life but it found a greater articulation and a practical direction through joining the society. It’s also been interesting and great fun engaging with other people with a similar outlook. My main contribution to the society is conducting the podcast interviews, something that gives me a lot of satisfaction and that I’ve learnt a lot from.

2 thoughts on “The MWS Podcast 32: Ed Catmull, President of Pixar and Disney Animation on Creativity.

  1. I very much enjoyed Ed Catmull’s dialogue with Barry. It demanded attention, as did Robert’s recent podcast on cognitive biases, very much a companion to Ed’s on creativity, fear of failure, and the subtle dynamics of equilibrium – or the elusive middle.

    Robert’s talk left me with a ‘felt sense’ of reassurance about what Alan Watts (I think) calls ‘the wisdom of insecurity’, and this was reaffirmed by Ed through his accounts of how this can be put into practice in human groups, where people can know that failure doesn’t connote shame or blame, and being wrong is as valid as being right, when both those impostors join the joyous creative shadow-dance ‘in the middle’

    Thanks Ed and Barry. I shall carry this sense to our Middle Way Society retreat later this month, when it could be good to listen to the podcasts again, and apply our understanding to our work together so far, and in our intentions for the future.

Leave a Reply

Your email address will not be published. Required fields are marked *

This site uses Akismet to reduce spam. Learn how your comment data is processed.