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Lawrence Levy – TO PIXAR AND BEYOND : My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs To Make Entertainment History
Lawrence Levy – TO PIXAR AND BEYOND : My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs To Make Entertainment History
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TO PIXAR AND BEYOND : My Unlikely Journey with Steve Jobs To Make Entertainment History

Lawrence Levy
BRAND NEW, HARDCOVER

RM25.00

The Revelatory Saga Of Pixar’s Rocky Start And Improbable Success

ISBN 9781786070814
Book Condition BRAND NEW
Format HARDCOVER
Publisher Oneworld Publications
Publication Date 02 Mar 2017
Pages 272
Weight 0.58 kg
Dimension 23.3 × 16 × 3 cm
Retail Price RM89.90
Availability: 2 in stock

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2 in stock

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★★ An AMAZON BEST BOOK of 2016 in BUSINESS & LEADERSHIP ★★

★★ A Sunday Times Best Book of the Year 2017 ★★

★★ A top pick on FORTUNE’S FAVORITE BOOKS LIST for 2016 ★★

★★ A 2017 AXIOM AWARDS SILVER MEDALIST in Business Memoir & Biography ★★
 
The never-before-told story of Pixar’s improbable success.
 
“To Pixar and Beyond” tells the story of how Lawrence Levy and Steve Jobs turned an unknown and struggling computer imaging company – Pixar – into an animation studio worth billions of dollars. Along the way, the company faced numerous internal and external challenges, tackling each with creative and strategic decisions that ultimately led to its success.
 
“Hi, Lawrence?” the caller asked. “This is Steve Jobs. I saw your picture in a magazine a few years ago and thought we’d work together someday.”
 
One day in November 1994, Lawrence Levy a Harvard-trained lawyer and Silicon Valley executive, received a phone call out of the blue from Steve Jobs, whom he’d never met, offering him a job running Pixar, a little-known company that had already lost Jobs $50 million.


After Steve Jobs was unceremoniously dismissed from Apple, he turned his attention to a little-known graphics art company that he owned called Pixar. With Pixar’s prospects looking bleak, it was with some trepidation that Levy accepted the position. After a few weeks he discovered that the situation was even worse than he’d imagined.
 
Pixar’s advertising division just about broke even, its graphics software had few customers, its short films didn’t make any money and, on top of all that, Jobs was pushing to take the company public. Everything was riding on the studio’s first feature film, codenamed Toy Story, and even then it would have to be one of the most successful animated features of all time…
 
What Levy found in Pixar was a company on the verge of failure. To Pixar and Beyond is the extraordinary story of what happened next: How Levy, working closely with Jobs and the Pixar team, produced and implemented a highly improbable roadmap that transformed the sleepy graphics art studio into one of Hollywood’s greatest success stories.
 
Set in the worlds of Silicon Valley and Hollywood, the book takes readers inside Pixar, Disney, law firms, and investment banks. It provides an up-close, first-hand account of Pixar’s stunning ascent, how it took risks, Levy’s enduring collaboration and friendship with Jobs, and how Levy came to see in Pixar deeper parallels that apply to all aspects of our lives.
 
Full of wisdom on bringing business and creativity together, and recounting the touching story of Levy’s enduring friendship with Jobs, To Pixar and Beyond is a fascinating insider’s account of one of Hollywood’s greatest success stories.
 
This is the story of the intersection of Pixar and the lives of Steve Jobs and Lawrence Levy. Lawrence Levy lays out the choices and risks that the team at Pixar took which made it into what we know today. He shows us the conflict between creativity and business realities and how Pixar struggled to keep the creative impulse first. The book is also a story of the journey that Lawrence makes as an individual. And, no story with Steve Jobs in it, cannot help spending a lot of time on him and his genius.
 
‘To Pixar and Beyond’ has 4 sections :
◆ The first section covers Lawrence Levy joining Pixar and his struggle to define a business model to save it.
◆ The second section deals primarily with the IPO and the release of their first movie ‘Toy Story’.
◆ The third section covers the growing pains of Pixar.
◆ The sale of Pixar to Disney, Steve Job’s death and Lawrence Levy’s journey of self-discovery is covered in the last section.
 
Lawrence Levy has given us a fantastic look into the history and inner working of Pixar. All the problems, risks, conflicts, aspirations and fears of Pixar and its employees are captured in detail. We have all heard of John Lassiter, Pete Doctor etc. or at least seen their names at the end of Pixar movies starting from Toy Story to Inside Out. This book helps us understand some of the people behind the names. More importantly, Lawrence ends up making us care about them.
 
When Levy arrived at Pixar (where Jobs served as chairman) as chief financial officer in February 1995, it was a small but brilliant firm on the edge of failure, not for lack of talent—this was the creative team that had developed the cutting-edge animation behind the still-unreleased Toy Story—but from a lack of business savvy and a deep distrust of Jobs.
 
By believing in Pixar’s future and its people, Levy explains, he and Jobs turned the tide for the struggling company, despite its deeply disadvantageous deal with Disney. The solution, Jobs and Levy realized, was an IPO to garner Pixar more capital.
 
After Pixar’s value skyrocketed to $1.46 billion on its first day of trading and Toy Story became an unexpected success, Pixar could finally renegotiate its deal with Disney, acquiring more creative control and a larger share of the profits. A wildly successful slate of films followed, ultimately leading to the 2006 sale of Pixar to Disney for $7.6 billion.
 
Steve Jobs has been the subject of many books and at least, a couple of movies. Most of them have focused on him as a product maker. This book shows us a side to him which has not been given as much attention — his talent in identifying talent and his behaviour when he has to rely on others’ creativity to make successful movies.
 
One of the interesting parts of the book are when Lawrence tries to explain what makes Pixar unique. His understanding that Pixar would be successful only if its culture and values remain undiluted is brilliant. He is even able to convince Steve Jobs and Disney that it is in their best interest not to interfere with Pixar’s values.
 
Levy has written a fascinating look at one of the most innovative companies of the early 21st century.
 
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About the Author :
 
LAWRENCE LEVY is a Silicon Valley lawyer and executive hired by Steve Jobs in 1994 as CFO and member of the Office of the President of Pixar Animation Studios. He was responsible for Pixar’s business strategy and IPO and guided Pixar’s transformation from a money-losing graphics company into a multibillion-dollar entertainment studio.
 
He later joined Pixar’s board of directors. He then left corporate life to study Eastern philosophy and meditation and their relevance to modern life. He now writes and teaches on this topic and cofounded Juniper Foundation to pursue this work. Originally from London, England, he earned degrees from Indiana University and Harvard Law School. He lives with his wife, Hillary, in Palo Alto, California.

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