Ed Catmull

Cofounder of Pixar Animation Studios and President of Pixar Animation and Disney Animation

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Book Recommendations:

Recommended by Ed Catmull

Becoming Steve Jobs is fantastic. After working with Steve for over 25 years, I feel this book captures with great insight the growth and complexity of a truly extraordinary person. (from Amazon)

The #1 New York Times bestselling biography of how Steve Jobs became the most visionary CEO in history. Becoming Steve Jobs breaks down the conventional, one-dimensional view of Steve Jobs that he was half-genius, half-jerk from youth, an irascible and selfish leader who slighted friends and family alike. Becoming Steve Jobsanswers the central question about the life and career of the Apple cofounder and CEO: How did a young man so reckless and arrogant that he was exiled from the company he founded become the most effective visionary business leader of our time, ultimately transforming the daily life of billions of people? Drawing on incredible and sometimes exclusive access, Schlender and Tetzeli tell a different story of a real human being who wrestled with his failings and learned to maximize his strengths over time. Their rich, compelling narrative is filled with stories never told before from the people who knew Jobs best, including his family, former inner circle executives, and top people at Apple, Pixar and Disney, most notably Tim Cook, Jony Ive, Eddy Cue, Ed Catmull, John Lasseter, Robert Iger and many others. In addition, Schlender knew Jobs personally for 25 years and draws upon his many interviews with him, on and off the record, in writing the book. He and Tetzeli humanize the man and explain, rather than simply describe, his behavior. Along the way, the book provides rich context about the technology revolution we've all lived through, and the ways in which Jobs changed our world. A rich and revealing account, Becoming Steve Jobs shows us how one of the most colorful and compelling figures of our times was able to combine his unchanging, relentless passion with an evolution in management style to create one of the most valuable and beloved companies on the planet.

Recommended by Ed Catmull

Oh my God! I wish I had this book when I was in college. Not only does it explain important mathematical principles better, but it explains principles I didn’t even know were principles. (from Amazon)

FROM THE AUTHOR: All legitimate copies of VDGF produced by Princeton University Press are crisply printed on high-quality paper.  If you obtain a shoddily printed copy, it's a fake: please return it and purchase a genuine PUP copy. An inviting, intuitive, and visual exploration of differential geometry and forms Visual Differential Geometry and Forms fulfills two principal goals. In the first four acts, Tristan Needham puts the geometry back into differential geometry. Using 235 hand-drawn diagrams, Needham deploys Newton's geometrical methods to provide new geometrical explanations of the classical results. In the fifth act, he offers the first undergraduate introduction to Differential Forms that treats advanced topics in an intuitive and geometrical manner. Unique features of the first four acts include: four distinct geometrical proofs of the fundamentally important Global Gauss-Bonnet theorem, providing a stunning link between local geometry and global topology; a simple, geometrical proof of Gauss's famous Theorema Egregium; a complete geometrical treatment of the Riemann curvature tensor of an n-manifold; and a detailed geometrical treatment of Einstein's field equation, describing gravity as curved spacetime (General Relativity), together with its implications for gravitational waves, black holes, and cosmology. The final act provides an intuitive, geometrical introduction to Differential Forms, elucidating such topics as the unification of all the integral theorems of vector calculus; the elegant reformulation of Maxwell's equations of electromagnetism in terms of 2-forms; de Rham cohomology; differential geometry via Cartan's method of moving frames; and the calculation of the Riemann tensor using curvature 2-forms. Six of the seven chapters of Act V can be read completely independently from the rest of the book, providing a self-contained introduction to Differential Forms. Requiring only basic calculus and geometry, Visual Differential Geometry and Forms provocatively rethinks the way this important area of mathematics should be understood and taught.

Recommended by Ed Catmull

The storyboard is a highly effective tool for helping people think visually about the problems to be solved, but just as important, it is a wonderful tool for presenting ideas to people who see them for the first time. Dan’s art of visual thinking and presentation is a wonderful creative tool and is well worth mastering. (from Amazon)

A fast and practical visual storytelling method that puts a powerful new toolkit into the hands of leaders, innovators, salespeople, teachers and anyone else who needs to quickly make an impact on increasingly distracted audiences. The Pop-Up Pitch is a radical new approach to help you create the perfect presentation, combining three key elements of persuasive storytelling-simple pictures, clear words, and powerful emotions-that together motivate audiences to pay attention, learn something new, and make effective decisions. The Pop-Up Pitch weaves together the latest insights on visual cognition, behavioral economics, and classic story structures in an easy-to-learn and inspiring storytelling algorithm. In this new era of remote, work and online presenting, it delivers powerful and persuasive outcomes for time-limited professionals dealing with complex ideas, attention-deficit audiences, and the evolving challenges of modern meetings.

Recommended by Ed Catmull

Brené visited Pixar to talk with our filmmakers. Her message was important, as movies are best when they come from a place of vulnerability, when the people who make them encounter setbacks and are forced to overcome them, when they are willing to have their asses handed to them. It is easy to sit back and talk about the values of a safe and meaningful culture, but extraordinarily difficult to pull it off. You don’t achieve good culture without constant attention, without an environment of safety, courage, and vulnerability. These are hard skills, but they are teachable skills. Start with this book. (from Amazon)

#1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • Brené Brown has taught us what it means to dare greatly, rise strong, and brave the wilderness. Now, based on new research conducted with leaders, change makers, and culture shifters, she’s showing us how to put those ideas into practice so we can step up and lead. Don’t miss the five-part Max docuseries Brené Brown: Atlas of the Heart! ONE OF BLOOMBERG’S BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR Leadership is not about titles, status, and wielding power. A leader is anyone who takes responsibility for recognizing the potential in people and ideas, and has the courage to develop that potential. When we dare to lead, we don’t pretend to have the right answers; we stay curious and ask the right questions. We don’t see power as finite and hoard it; we know that power becomes infinite when we share it with others. We don’t avoid difficult conversations and situations; we lean into vulnerability when it’s necessary to do good work. But daring leadership in a culture defined by scarcity, fear, and uncertainty requires skill-building around traits that are deeply and uniquely human. The irony is that we’re choosing not to invest in developing the hearts and minds of leaders at the exact same time as we’re scrambling to figure out what we have to offer that machines and AI can’t do better and faster. What can we do better? Empathy, connection, and courage, to start. Four-time #1 New York Times bestselling author Brené Brown has spent the past two decades studying the emotions and experiences that give meaning to our lives, and the past seven years working with transformative leaders and teams spanning the globe. She found that leaders in organizations ranging from small entrepreneurial startups and family-owned businesses to nonprofits, civic organizations, and Fortune 50 companies all ask the same question: How do you cultivate braver, more daring leaders, and how do you embed the value of courage in your culture? In Dare to Lead, Brown uses research, stories, and examples to answer these questions in the no-BSstyle that millions of readers have come to expect and love. Brown writes, “One of the most important findings of my career is that daring leadership is a collection of four skill sets that are 100 percent teachable, observable, and measurable. It’s learning and unlearning that requires brave work, tough conversations, and showing up with your whole heart. Easy? No. Because choosing courage over comfort is not always our default. Worth it? Always. We want to be brave with our lives and our work. It’s why we’re here.” Whether you’ve read Daring Greatly and Rising Strong or you’re new to Brené Brown’s work, this book is for anyone who wants to step up and into brave leadership.