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Comment by baxtr | Hacker News Reader

I wonder why so few companies employ Pixar’s Brain Trust method.

You get into a room with a bunch of key execs who are not part of your project and then they tear your product/movie/idea apart.

You don’t have to implement any of their suggestions but since these are seasoned execs they see flaws readily.

The key is that the process encourages candid feedback without hierarchy or defensiveness.

This goes on for a couple of iterations until the idea is ready for production.

I think Apple has something similar.

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Requires really secure upper management (think Steve Jobs, or John Lasseter).

Those types of folks are not representative of most tech C-Suite denizens.

Damn. You’re probably right.

I find this insight so frustrating though. Isn’t that exactly what upper management is supposed to be doing and what they’re paid for after all?

Yup.

Imo it's due to people have a hard time separating the worth of their idea with their self-worth. So criticism of their 'baby' breeds negative sentiment which creates a challenging political environment for criticism, which would need to be ameliorated by strong organizational culture.

I think the commenter is saying, with a brain trust, you don't share organizational structure or hierarchy. Neither party has enough interaction for a political environment to form. You can be offended, but you won't see them again and you're not forced to implement their ideas

> I wonder why so few companies employ Pixar’s Brain Trust method

It doesn't scale. That model hasn't been utilized at Pixar lately - whatsm was the last good/hit Pixar movie that wasn't a sequel or side-quel? Like most companies, Pixar relies on a few great products or ideas, and then doubling/tripling down on them, to make sure the graph grows up and to the right for shareholders.

Mainly because they ousted Lassiter for being to critical of the crap that was being put in front of him. They framed it in other ways publically, but I'm pretty sure he was getting in the way of others taking the company in a direction that didn't prioritize quality.

Oh, I can think of very few exec I’ve worked with in tech who would willingly expose their team to public criticism, for fear that it would blow back on them. I’ve seen execs pay heavy prices for a team making a mistake in public. It’s stupid, but some orgs run that way.

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