Pixar- Culture and Organisations Essay

The companies worked towards a culture that was more in line with team learning. Pixar had previously operated under the premise where people were given the full chance to be creative and use their ideas in order to learn from their success or failures. Disney allowed for creativity however was more micromanaged. This new cultural shift for Disney to let go of some of the control was a hard thing to do for them. Disney had initially lost some of the people with this shift in their culture mainly with those who failed to adapt to this new free-spirited environment. With Disney’s regimented culture they followed more of a top down approach within their work environment. This approach initially during the merger hindered the learning approach that Disney Pixar was trying to create. Some employees at Pixar initially had issues with the cultural clash of a free-spirited environment and the rigid environment Disney operated with causing problems with retaining the talent at Pixar. Despite these cultural clashes and differences Disney Pixar was able to pull their new-shared vision in a direction that allowed for cross-organizational collaboration and for a new culture that worked for both companies.

Almost every fall, Disney and Pixar would team up and create a family friendly film that would have “anthropomorphic creatures or objects rendered with state-of-the-art computer graphics.”(Babich 235) Then later on in the summer Disney would come out with one of its more classic movies ,a 2D animated film

Communication is everywhere. We, as interactive human beings, spend the majority of our time corresponding with others to satisfy our physical, identity, social, and practical needs (Adler, Rodman, & Sevigny, 2011). Often, this is consciously done; we search our minds for the accurate linguistic means to express our experiences, and use them to communicate with those around us. However, communication is not as straightforward and effortless as we may believe. It is, in fact, often unintentional, with 65% of it occurring as a result of non-verbal cues (Matsumoto, Shibata, Seiji, Mori, & Shioe, 2010). As mentioned by Marta Dynel (2011) in a study done on nonverbal communication, “Non verbal signs and signals ... are prevalent practically in

How Marxist theory is presented in Disney/Pixar films, with a focus on Toy Story 3 and Wall-E.

Specific Purpose: The purpose is to inform on how all Pixar movies exist in the same universe and is telling the same story just jumping around in time. This timelines includes Toy Story (1995), A Bug’s Life (1998), Toy Story 2 (1998), Monsters Inc. (2001), Finding Nemo (2003), The Incredibles (2004), Cars (2006), Ratatouille (2007), WALL-E (2008), Up (2009), Toy Story 3 (2010), Cars 2 (2011), Brave (2012) ,and 2013 Monsters University (Negroni, 2015).

Buying energetic, young and creative Pixar, Disney intends to regain lost ground. But, they must do that in a smart way, to satisfy the needs of the Pixar owners, shareholders and employees. Back to the ownership test, the Disney ownership of Pixar will produce a greater competitive advantage for them. They will lose a powerful competitor, and will produce something

○ Meaningfulness – Skill variety is increased through Pixar University. By allowing staff to participate in the production discussions, it leads to task identity of their contribution to the whole project.

The acquisition of Pixar would be beneficial to Disney due to how both companies’ businesses are related. This related acquisition would lead to the formation of more synergies and hence create value through the integration of their resources and capabilities. By acquiring some of Pixar’s core competencies and strengths, Disney may realise a new growth potential while reinforcing its strategic competitiveness.

Monsters were men dressed up in rubber suits and extra-terrestrial planets were hand-made sets built in studios. For a while, animatronics were even used to bring the otherwise impossible to life. But without the advent of computer generated animation, today's live-action movies would be completely unrecognizable. Computer Generated Imagery in movies started in the 1970s as visual effects and short animations were being made from layering multiple 2D images to make it look rounded and therefore 3D. In 1972 Pixar co-founders, Ed Catmull and Fred Park, produced the first prototype of a digitally-rendered 3D hand using technology that would become the foundation for countless effects and film masterpieces that followed. In 1993 the production of toy story start which was set to be the very first full animation film made using CGI. Pixar, which was known for producing small animations to promote their products(computers), was approached by Disney to make a computer-animated film after the success of their short film Tin Toy. In 1995 Cameron wrote the first treatment for Avatar with the intention of pushing the

“Nothing exemplifies this more than our creative brain trust and our daily review process” (Catmull, 2008, p.4) Hindrances incorporate getting individuals in diverse fields to treat each other as associates. Pixar University offers an accumulation of in-house courses that employees take to assimilate the specialties that are diverse between individuals. Pixar University role is preparing and broadly to educate individuals as they mature in their professions. Likewise it offers a mixture of discretionary classes that give individuals from diverse orders the chance to blend and acknowledge what everybody does. It has been very satisfying to see the standards and methodologies we created at Pixar change this studio (Catmull,

Pixar is a company that has ties to other major corporations in our American culture. Pixar Animation Studios started as a part of the Lucas film computer group, which is owned by George Lucas the creator of Star Wars. However, after receiving funding from Steve Jobs the division became its own corporation in 1986. After that Disney purchased Pixar, which allowed Steve Jobs to become a shareholder in Disney also. With these changes due to the ownership of the corporation an analysis of managerial economics is overdue. What follows is an evaluate how Pixar attains balance between culture, rewards, and boundaries, what is Pixar’s organizational structure and why they have the structure they have, how Pixar’s leadership helps to create an ethical organization, how Pixar’s innovation helps the organization to accomplish its goals, how emotional intelligence helps the leadership guide the company, and how Pixar has overcome barriers to change. Pixar’s history has presented the firm with challenges and the firm has managed to overcome those challenges, anyone who plans to one day own their own business should look at the company and understand how the firm accomplished their tasks despite the presented challenges. The merger with Disney resulted in some problems for Pixar, but the merger was pursued for a reason. By merging, both firm have the potential to save time and money; there is also the potential to learn from each other.

Fingernails may not extend more than a quarter-inch beyond fingertips. No more than one ring

Companies that have an emphasis on deadlines, success, and tangible results, promote an environment that leads towards results and completion, as opposed to a fine-tuned mastery of the specific task, wherein creativity is sacrificed for optimization. Pixar has received numerous awards for their movies, achieving commercial and artistic success, however,

Established in 1923, Disney Studios released the first ever full-length animated feature film, Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs in 1937. By 2015, Disney Studios employed about “6,500 employees, and spent $2 billion producing films annually”. Alan Horn, Chairman of the Walt Disney Studios, oversees five studios, that together made up Disney Studios. The Walt Disney Studios Motion Pictures ‘Disney Live Action’ and Walt Disney Animation Studios ‘Disney Animation’ are directly from Walt Disney’s original studio. The three others were acquisitions made during Bob Iger’s time as chief executive officer of The Walt Disney Company. The first was Disney's competitor animation studio, Pixar, which was purchased for $7.4 billion in 2006; second, Marvel Entertainment, which had its roots in comic books, for $4 billion in 2009; and finally the legendary filmmaker George Lucas’ Lucasfilm for $4.05 billion in 2012. During this time, Disney Studios began pursuing a “tentpole” strategy, which entails investing in higher budget films that would hopefully produce a larger profit by pulling in a large portion of the market. The larger profit would also help compensate for losses that may occur in smaller budgeted films. As it stands, Disney studios currently produces 10-12 films annually with approximately eight of them with production budgets in excess of $150 million. The current breakdown of tentpole films expected annually is as follows: two from Marvel, one from Lucasfilm, one from Pixar,

Its large size gives Disney several advantages, such as a large budget and a large human resource base. Internally, Disney follows a top-down approach, where managers tend to impose the culture, and bureaucracy is considered large with 185,000 employees in 2016 (Forbes, 2016). The decision making lies at top management level, giving the company a hierarchical structure. In the creative world Disney is known to make movies based on profitability, rather than quality of animation and image. Pixar’s core competence is their technological 3D success in computer animation. When looking at the staff at Pixar , it can be seen that they are very technically educated and have a lot of in-house creativity. This is the reason for their high level of innovation. Furthermore, they focus on quality instead of sales figures. Internally, Pixar uses the bottom-up approach, where input of employees is highly valued, and Pixar offers a very communicative and open working environment.