Pixar Company Analysis

Pixar is an American company, which works in the field of animation production and is located in California, United States. Pixar was started in 1979 being the part of the computer branch of Lucasfilm and purchased by The Walt Disney Company in 2006. The success of Pixar started with the release of the Toy Story in 1995 and continued with Finding Nemo, The Incredibles, Cars, Ratatouille and others, which played crucial role in the redefining the industry of animation and visual technology. The company is also known for its major values, which form the basement of its unbeatable success. Employees at Pixar are exceptionally talented and an open collaboration exists among workers coming from multiple disciplines. The paper analysis the Pixar Company, which follows effective, years-tested leadership strategy that undergo as challenges, so advantages to pursue the growth strategies.

Leadership is perceived very seriously at Pixar as the company supposes the leaders to be the chief component of the effective work of the whole staff. The basic element of the effective work of any organization is precisely build mechanism where every its element works properly to support each other. Pixar struggled to construct the working organism, which starts from the story development and goes through computer animation to the final product, movie. “In A Bug’s Life, for example, the story was totally revamped after more than a year of work had been completed”. The Pixar’s stories are developed very detailed and accurately, a great deal of employees operates on its creation and doing so, the company manages to succeed. Moreover, the management in the company plays a significant for its success, thus managers are those who aid the interaction between leaders and the staff. They also are responsible for operating of the organization, following the regulations by the staff and other queries. At Pixar, everyone is functioning understanding that his/her success locates in the success of the others members of the company. This aids at moving in a collaborative manner to assure that everyone operating in the company succeeds. “Employees are encouraged to devote up to four hours a week, every week, to further their education at Pixar University”. The collaborative spirit at Pixar assists in development of the experienced workers and new hands with a healthy regard for each other going in the environment of trust and credibility prevailing throughout the company.

The Pixar’s strategy is rather efficient as they are concerned chiefly on innovations. The leader at Pixar claims, “Catmull has been overseeing the development of new animation software, called Luxo”. The leaders of the organization understand that only innovative technologies and development of the company can lead to success. They are not scared to take risks and try new things. The risks and innovations are always justified that show the company’s income rate. The company’s movie, WALL·E, tells a love story about robots based in a post-apocalyptic world and filled with trash. And Pixar’s previous movie, Ratatouille, tells about a French rat that is eager to be a chef. Thus, the company’s creative workers attempt to tell about unexpected ideas and this method works. Although at the start of producing these movies, the movie makers didn’t know if such extreme ideas would appeal to the public and make them review the movie several times. Thus, the company is always taking a chance and risk implementing something new and it works.

Although there are lots of companies on the market, Pixar is always on a run and it is due to its competitive advantages. The company is usually developing and takes risks telling the extraordinary stories in its movies. In the film making business all the movie making organizations avoid taking risks and update the industry and that is why their films are all alike. Ed Catmull claims, “If you want to be original, you have to accept the uncertainty, even when it’s uncomfortable, and have the capability to recover when your organization takes a big risk and fails. What’s the key to being able to recover? Talented people!” Pixar is very carefully choosing its employees to operate in highly competitive environment. The tough thing is, of course, to get creative people to function efficiently with each other. That demands respect and trust, which leaders can form in their team workers. Thus, the company is constructing an environment, which nurtures respectful and trusting relationships and release everybody’s creativity. If all he actions are done right, vibrant community is the result where talented humans are sympathetic to each other and their mutual work, everybody feels that he is part of something unique, and their accomplishments and passion make the society a loadstone for creative people going out of colleges or operating at the diverse places. Pixar differentiates from other companies by its ability to take risks and find talented people to work in the company.

However, along with beneficial sides, Pixar also possesses negative challenges. The company is struggling to make its movies in accordance with high standards of film industry “…computer-generated animated films do still take considerable time to develop”, and that is why, the production of the film is taking lots of time. Pixar cannot manage to release more than one film a year while other companies unleash several ones. The pace of Pixar’s production is rather slow in comparison with other organizations. The company tries to fight with this disadvantage but its employees cannot operate rapider following the high standards. One more obstacle, which Pixar experiences is working with newcomers who are not skilled enough to do the work well from the very beginning. The company must spend time and money on their teaching and adapting to the organization’s realities. Moreover, the leaders must be sure that the staff keeps developing hits for the company even after consolidation with Disney. The negative effect on the movies production brought the death of Jobs who played a strategic role in the company. Jobs was that who other leaders could copy and evolve according with his strategies too. Moreover, after the unifying with the Disney, Pixar must learn to work with the other company and meet its interest with the others. “Ed Catmull and John Lasseter have been in charge of the combined animation business of both Pixar and Disney”. The leaders must consider development of the Pixar company animation along with the movie making in Disney. Both companies must come to agreement based on the ideas proposed and implementations of the staff of both organizations.

To overcome challenges on the way to success, Pixar must implement new growth strategies of company running. First, Pixar has to increase in production movies, releasing more than one film a year. The company must double the amount of its employees to be able to achieve the increase in production. More workers would be able to support all the organization’s needs and accelerate the movies unleash. The more workers are operating, the more ideas they bring to the company and are ready to work longer and effective ours to fight the concurrence and earn good money. Pixar has to update its software and constantly implement new technology to be on the flow and produce more movies. New technological tools will aid in improving animations and thus lead to the ameliorating of the movies quality. Moreover, the company needs the innovative leaders who “…don’t create innovations themselves, but they are effective at leading creative people. While many companies claim they are innovative, few successfully develop leaders who understand how to lead creative teams”. Not only technologies must be innovated but also the leader themselves who must always be ready to evolve and search for new ideas and ways of their implementation.

Second, after the unifying with Disney, the usage of differences can be done through the utilization of matrix strategy. This will aid in finding a consummate balance between the managers’ competencies of both the companies. Moreover, communication between the staff, managers and leaders plays a significant role in managing differences of both companies. Leaders are in charge of establishing an open integration and communication between team members and between mangers to ensure smooth flow of information and knowledge. This will aid people from both the companies understand beliefs, values and working style of each others, which will result in more respect for culture and views of each company. Treating the company-partner members respectfully is the key to the prosperity of a merger. Moreover, formal and informal training must be provided to the workers of Disney in order to adopt themselves with the free and open culture of Pixar. The two companies must always try to come to the common decisions supporting each other. The managers and leaders are better to hold meetings often to confer and coming to the common purpose. The organizations also have to pursue the mutual purposes and follow strategies, which are of the highest significance for both.

Pixar Company is an efficient animation organization, which operates from 1979. However, the real success came to the company with the release of the “Toy Story in 1995, which was followed by the several prosperous projects. In 2006, the company was purchased by the Disney Company and both organizations had to learn to operate mutually. Pixar faced diverse challenges as slow pace of movie releasing or hardships in the interaction with the Disney management but its strong sides as constant implementation of the innovations by the talented staff assisted the company on its way to success. Along with the advantages of the organizational work, Pixar should make the efforts to unleash more than one film per year. The organization must also contribute to new innovative technologies to be on the run a long time. The most significant issue the company must overcome is interaction with the Disney Company to be able to pursue the common strategies.