As you may be aware, Toy Story 3 will be in theatres by this time next year, more than 10 years since the release of its popular prequel, Toy Story 2. Here’s a preview:

Now you may wonder how a computer animated Disney film is relevant to your enterprise? More than you think.

Pixar studios may as well be the poster child for internal collaboration. Over the years, its community of artists have collectively generated a series of stories, plots, and unforgettable characters. Do you remember watching Finding Nemo, Monster Inc, or A Bug’s Life? What about Wall-E and more recently, Up? these titles must ring a bell. Most of the studio’s releases have grossed well over $200 Million at the box office and have become household names launching a new revenue stream composed of franchised toys and goods.In an Interview conducted last year, John Lassetter, Chief Creative Officer, emphasized that “talent in the workplace is rare” “[not so much] a lack of good people, but rather a lack of good ideas”

Ed Catmull, President, is proud to note that “Unlike most other studios, we have never bought scripts or movie ideas from the outside. I don’t think our success is largely luck. Rather, I believe our adherence to a set of principles and practices for managing creative talent and risk is responsible.”

Filmmaking, especially CGI (computer generated imagery), is a complex combination of art and science that involves numerous minds from varied disciplines. Within Pixar, it’s an ideagora in the truest sense; millions of ideas are circulated in a shared marketplace and then combined into a unified, innovative end product. The only difference is that Pixar’ ideagora is strictly internal where as most corporations today opt for a more open form of crowdsourcing.

Creativity resonates in each film frame; from every character to every dialogue to the aesthetic setting, lighting, background and technical pace. Thousands of decisions are made to incorporate millions of employee ideas. This is an interesting concept as most people would associate creativity as an individualistic task in which one person, mainly the creative director, would be responsible for all aspects. Collective creativity doesn’t seem all that feasible when the goal is to assemble a coherent product… in other words, how can you complete a puzzle to compose a consistent picture when all pieces are from different sets?

Also with the recent discussion on Dunbar’s number and constraints in the size of collaborative teams, I wonder how Disney Pixar has coordinated its 600 people staff? One possible hypothesis is dividing into several communities of working groups (Dunbar clusters) that are each capped at 150.

Furthermore, I wonder if Pixar’s business model is truly ahead of or behind the times? Is this an antiquated way of generating ideas that hinders upon porous collaboration from outside the corporation? Or is this an organization well aware of the limits of collaboration and so forth sits on the optimal point where maximum efficiency meets minimum resources?