OverMatter

Ode to Boyd

"In Boyd's notion of conflict, the target is always your opponent's mind." (The Strategy of the Fighter Pilot)

The Pixar Way

"Since 1995, with the release of "Toy Story," Pixar's films have reinvented the art of animation, won 19 Academy Awards and grossed more than $3 billion at the box office. But the secret to the success of Pixar Animation Studios is its utterly distinctive approach to the workplace. The company doesn't just make films that perform better than standard fare. It also makes its films differently — and, in the process, defies many familiar, and dysfunctional, industry conventions. Pixar has become the envy of Hollywood because it never went Hollywood.

More than a few business pundits have drawn parallels between the flat, decentralized "corporation of the future" and the ad-hoc collection of actors, producers and technicians that come together around a film and disband once it is finished. In the Hollywood model, the energy and investment revolves around the big idea — the script — and the fine print of the deal. Highly talented people agree to terms, do their jobs, and move on to the next project. The model allows for maximum flexibility, to be sure, but it inspires minimum loyalty and endless jockeying for advantage.

Turn that model on its head and you get the Pixar version: a tightknit company of long-term collaborators who stick together, learn from one another and strive to improve with every production. Consider the case of Brad Bird, writer and director of "The Incredibles," who spent the first decades of his career shuttling around the business as an ever-promising, never-quite-recognized animator. (He worked on "The Simpsons" and directed one feature, the critically acclaimed but commercial dud, "Iron Giant.") When Pixar recruited him, Mr. Bird went to work immediately on "The Incredibles," which went on to win two Academy Awards and a nomination for best original screenplay.

Unlike a typical Oscar-winning director, however, Mr. Bird is not a free agent with his sights set on the next big-budget negotiation. He is an employee of the studio. Indeed, he is part of a group of directors and technical talents at Pixar — including Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich, the creators of "Finding Nemo," and Pete Doctor, the director of "Monsters, Inc." — who have staked their reputations on their work at Pixar. Again, in contrast to convention, these professionals have traded one-time contracts for long-term affiliation and contribute across the studio, rather than to just their pet projects.

According to Randy S. Nelson, who joined the company in 1997 and is dean of Pixar University, a company-run education and training operation, this model reflects "Pixar's specific critique of the industry's standard practice." He explains it this way: "Contracts allow you to be irresponsible as a company. You don't need to worry about keeping people happy and fulfilled. What we have created here — an incredible workspace, opportunities to learn and grow, and, most of all, great co-workers — is better than any contract."

There is a tough-minded business strategy behind Pixar's we're-all-in-this-together workplace. A single animated feature takes four or five years to complete, the last 18 months of which feel like a breathless sprint. In such a high-stakes environment, even the most outrageously talented individuals are bound to suffer creative setbacks. One reason Pixar has produced such a string of hits is that the organization has learned how to hang together under the pressure.

"The problem with the Hollywood model is that it's generally the day you wrap production that you realize you've finally figured out how to work together," Mr. Nelson said. "We've made the leap from an idea-centered business to a people-centered business. Instead of developing ideas, we develop people. Instead of investing in ideas, we invest in people. We're trying to create a culture of learning, filled with lifelong learners. It's no trick for talented people to be interesting, but it's a gift to be interested. We want an organization filled with interested people.""

(How Pixar Adds a New School of Thought to Disney - New York Times)

Restart your heart in Vegas

"Las Vegas casino security officers have restored the heartbeats of about 1,800 gamblers and employees in the past nine years, according to the Clark County Fire Department.

Medical research shows that casino visitors whose hearts suddenly stop survive at higher rates even than people who happen to go into cardiac arrest while visiting a hospital. "The safest place in America to suffer sudden cardiac arrest is a casino," says Bryan Bledsoe, a George Washington University emergency-medicine doctor and co-author of textbooks for paramedics."

(WSJ.com - Beating the Odds, January 28, 2006; Page A1)

How to get an operator

The IVR Cheat Sheet

A brief history of hard drives

"What high-tech product advances the fastest? It's probably the hard drive. The capacity doubles easily every two years and sometimes every year, faster even than the chip progress described by Moore's Law." (CNET News.com)

Freedom's Unsung Hero

"Hong Kong's prosperity since World War II is sometimes referred to as a "miracle." But miracles require the intervention of a deity, whereas Hong Kong's remarkable economic growth between 1945 and its handover to China in 1997 owes a great deal to the nonintervention of a mortal man, John James Cowperthwaite, who died over the weekend at the age of 90.

Cowperthwaite arrived in Hong Kong in 1945 and served as Financial Secretary of the then-British colony from 1961-1971. Perhaps more than any other single figure, he was the architect and guardian of the greatest natural experiment in free-market capitalism in the postwar world. It is all the more remarkable that he kept the colonial government small and out of the business of business at a time when socialism was ascendant in Britain.

In 1997, Milton Friedman noted that since 1945 Hong Kong's GDP per capita had gone from a fraction to substantially more than that of Israel and Britain, and had caught up with that of the U.S., even as the colony's population increased tenfold. That astonishing performance became a policy beacon first to the nearby small nations of Asia (the "tigers") and eventually to Mainland China itself.

One of the better known stories about the undeservedly obscure Cowperthwaite was his refusal to collect economic statistics about Hong Kong during his tenure as Financial Secretary, lest they produce an impulse toward central planning among the bureaucrats. "I did very little," Sir John once said. "All I did was to try to prevent some of the things that might undo it." Other would-be central planners could learn a lot from what John Cowperthwaite didn't do."

(WSJ.com, January 26, 2006; Page A10)

Google vs BellSouth?

"Given the market power that Google has today, they are more relevant to the Internet community than BellSouth. Given that, if I were running Google today, I would choose to implement a BellSouth Boycott and stop offering access to Google to BellSouth customers and would start advertising Cox Cable service on any requests that came from BellSouth customers in their regions. I’m willing to wager that by Q3 2006, BellSouth’s DSL group will feel the effects of their grave error in judgment.' (Jeff Pulver to Eric Schmidt: Turn the Tide – Turn off BellSouth!)

Reaganomics at 25

"Twenty-five years ago today, Ronald Reagan was inaugurated as the 40th President of the United States promising less intrusive government, lower tax rates and victory over communism. On that same day, the American hostages in Iran were freed after 444 days of captivity. If the story of history is one long and arduous march toward freedom, this was a momentous day well worth commemorating.

All the more so because over this 25-year period prosperity has been the rule, not the exception, for America -- in stark contrast to the stagflationary 1970s. Perhaps the greatest tribute to the success of Reaganomics is that, over the course of the past 276 months, the U.S. economy has been in recession for only 15. That is to say, 94% of the time the U.S. economy has been creating jobs (43 million in all) and wealth ($30 trillion). More wealth has been created in the U.S. in the last quarter-century than in the previous 200 years. The policy lessons of this supply-side prosperity need to be constantly relearned, lest we return to the errors that produced the 1970s.

The heart and soul of Reagan's economic agenda were sound money (making the dollar "as good as gold," as Reagan used to put it) and lower tax rates. On monetary policy, Reagan has won a resounding victory. Today, nearly all economists agree with Reagan's then-controversial belief that the sole purpose of monetary policy should be to keep prices stable. Double-digit inflation is a distant memory unlikely to recur anytime soon.

On tax policy, Reaganomics has also carried the day, if somewhat less completely. Tax rates in the U.S. are on average half as high now as they were in the 1970s, and almost every nation has followed the Reagan model of lower tax rates. Even Bill Clinton only dared to raise the top marginal income tax rate back to 39.5%, not 50% or 70%."

(WSJ.com - Still Morning in America, January 20, 2006; Page A14)

A Pay-Per-Click Primer

"Alexandre Douzet, Co-Founder and Vice President, Marketing at job site TheLadders.com, has authored a paper on PPC search and the cost of acquisition. PDF download here." (John Battelle's Searchblog: A PPC Primer)

Support the Spanish-American War!

"Every time you make a cell phone call, you'll continue to pay for a war fought more than 107 years ago." (3 Percent Federal Excise Tax On Phone Calls Started 107 Years Ago)