In his new book, Creativity, Inc., Ed Catmull, co-founder of Pixar, talks about how to keep a creative team running. He says he noticed many creative companies, even Disney, dying off a bit at some point. They couldn’t keep their creativity going. Catmull wanted to know the reason and whether it could be avoided. Now, with co-writer Amy Wallace, he has given us his conclusions.

“If you’re doing something new, you will make mistakes,” he says. “In fact, if you’re not making mistakes, you’re probably just copying other things. The way you avoid mistakes is to be super safe. Well, we can’t be safe. That means somebody will make mistakes, and we have to say let’s learn from it.”

He says he learned from Disney the technique of putting your storyboard on video to see it works the way you think it will. And it never does at first. In fact, the original storyboarded video isn’t good at all, but artists and writers lose their objectivity at that point and fail to see the problems. Catmull tries to work through the problems with an atmosphere that builds everyone up and allows them to take risks in pursuit of a stronger story.

You can read an excerpt from Catmull and Wallace’s book through NoiseTrade and your eReader before you buy.