Stanford Executive Briefings Library

With fascinating insights about the creative process at Pixar and Disney, Ed Catmull recounts lessons learned from working with Steve Jobs, speaks to the real dangers, and importance, of failure, and reminds us that whatever conclusions we have drawn, we need to hold them lightly.

Fear and uncertainty in the workplace hurt the morale of teams and lead to pessimism, poor focus and subpar performance. Jon Gordon’s strategies for successfully uniting teams center on his belief that communication is key.

Your job as a manager is not to come up with solutions—it is to be the architect of an organization that comes up with solutions. William Barnett explains how to see competition as an engine that generates capability.

Cynthia Montgomery Professor at the Harvard Business School makes the case for bringing people back into the equation. Though you start with ideas, you need leaders to construct a company that brings these ideas to fruition. Leadership is required to define your purpose and form a management model that carries it out.

Most companies today face a fundamental problem: the disconnect between what they aspire to do and what they can actually accomplish. CEO’s are worried about their differentiation in a world that is increasingly hard to compete in. But are they creating strategies without fully understanding what the organization is capable of delivering?

Tackling the serious topic of stress in his famously entertaining manner, Professor Sapolsky sets the stage on a Kenyan savannah, with a hungry lion in hot pursuit of a terrified zebra. As he explains, the zebra’s fight-or-flight response channels essential energy to its survival effort by shutting down and even damaging nonessential biological functions—in a temporary, short-term response.

Steve Young gives us glimpses of his experience on the field from ignominious interceptions to come-from-behind wins with self-deprecating humor and passion for the game, Mr. Young shares his lifelong takeaways. How being pushed beyond his comfort zone by a tireless coach generated the creative tension needed to keep him focused and take his game to another level.

David Kelley, founder and chair of IDEO, discusses human-centered “design thinking,” which requires building empathy for the end-users of whatever product, service or environment you are creating. But empathy alone is not enough. If you want to innovate routinely, you must have a process.

Companies looking to be innovative face a conundrum: policies and procedures designed to make them efficient oftentimes stifle innovation. Unlike start-ups which are innovative by design, most organizations believe innovation can only happen by exception or heroic efforts.