BUILDING CULTURE LIKE PIXAR

A BROWSER MANIFESTO – PART 11

Historically most films have been live action shot by independent production teams, while most video games have been made by independent third-party developers under a similar kind of contract with a publisher. Pixar is radically different because they are a technology company that systematically leverages tools. We do something similar and like Pixar, have found that it is easier to implement under your own roof with your own staff. Just for starters this eliminates questions about direction, ownership and sharing. But there is much more to it.

To create a systematic competitive advantage a game developer needs to be building a system, not a game. The organization must become part of this system. It begins with corporate culture and values and you want people that have the desire and confidence to innovate and collaborate. Strategically you are going to be better off if your people believe they can make a great, new original game because you’ll get less market share in a clone war and less revenue share if you are always licensing other people’s brands. It will also make an enormous difference if you can convince everyone to use the same tools and to collaborate on a technology roadmap and the sharing of Best Practices. This way everyone can learn from internal experts about how to use tools and metrics to make games that drive traffic, retain customers and monetize better.

These kinds of things beg for a centralized organization with everyone in the same building to improve communications and management. However, I will instead argue for a global organization with several medium-sized offices. The market is global and if your employees aren’t global you’ll remain too foreign for many potential customers. Our office in Finland is an interesting melting pot all by itself because people born in 35 different countries have worked there. They have a good idea of global tastes because it is in the building. Costs are also much more competitive when you are global, as compared to only being in an expensive city like San Francisco or London. In many of our seven locations the turnover rate and organizational churn are also lower because we’re the best game company in town – simply because there are fewer competitors of note.

To make such a structure work we ask everyone to communicate in English, we make extensive use of tools like email, IM and Skype and we gratefully get people to participate in conference calls that have to span a lot of time zones. We are respectful and courteous about the demands and it works because everyone is learning much faster and advancing in their career. It seems like every office has some big brother offices that they aspire to follow, and some little brother offices that they are training and managing on some projects. This process allows the most advanced people to take on exciting new work by enabling them to hand down mastered categories to a new owner for whom it is a chance to advance and grow. Pixar continues to be a great role model for us. Harvard Business School was sufficiently fascinated by how we do it that they wrote a case study about Digital Chocolate: http://hbr.org/product/digital-chocolate/an/410049-PDF-ENG.

43.George W. Bush

George Walker Bush (born July 6, 1946) is an American politician who served as the 43rd President of the United States from 2001 to 2009. Before that, he was the 46th Governor of Texas, serving from 1995 to 2000.

Bush was born in New Haven, Connecticut. He is the eldest son of Barbara Bush and 41st President George H. W. Bush, making him the only American president besides John Quincy Adams to be the son of a preceding president.^[4] He is also the brother of Jeb Bush, former Governor of Florida.

After graduating from Yale University in 1968 and Harvard Business School in 1975, Bush worked in oil businesses. He married Laura Welch in 1977 and ran unsuccessfully for the House of Representatives shortly thereafter. He later co-owned the Texas Rangers baseball team before defeating Ann Richardsin the 1994 Texas gubernatorial election. In a close and controversial election, Bush was elected President in 2000 as the Republican candidate, defeating Vice President Al Gore in the Electoral College.

Early on, the Bush administration withdrew from a number of international treaty processes, notably the Kyoto Protocol on global warming.^[5] A series of terrorist attacks occurred eight months into Bush's first term as president on September 11, 2001. In response, Bush announced a global War on Terror, which included an invasion of Afghanistan that same year and a 2003 invasion of Iraq. In addition to national security issues, Bush promoted policies on the economy, health care, education, and social security reform. He signed into law broad tax cuts, the PATRIOT Act, the No Child Left Behind Act, the Partial-Birth Abortion Ban Act, and Medicare prescription drug benefits for seniors. His tenure saw national debates on immigration, Social Security, electronic surveillance, and waterboarding and other "enhanced interrogation techniques".

Bush successfully ran for re-election against Democratic Senator John Kerry in 2004, in another relatively close election. After his re-election, Bush received increasingly heated criticism from across the political spectrum.^[6][7][8] In 2005, the Bush Administration dealt with widespread criticism over its handling ofHurricane Katrina.^[9][10][11] Following this and other controversies, as well as dissatisfaction with the direction of the Iraq War, Democrats won control of Congress in the 2006 elections. As the United States entered its longest post–World War II recession in December 2007, the Bush Administration enacted multiple economic programs intended to preserve the country's financial system. Though Bush was popular in the U.S. for much of his first term,^[12] his popularity declined sharply during his second term. He was a highly controversial figure internationally, with public protests occurring even during visits to close allies, such as the United Kingdom.^[13]

After leaving office, Bush returned to Texas and purchased a home in a suburban area of Dallas. He is currently a public speaker and has written a book about his life entitled Decision Points.^[14]