Keep pulling the thread on Ed Catmull.
Steve Jobs would not have renewed Pixar's contract with Disney if Michael Eisner had remained CEO.
In his first call to Steve Jobs as incoming CEO, Bob Iger admitted that all of Disney's new popular characters were from Pixar and that Disney Animation was not close to being fixed.
During Pixar's 10 years as a public company, from 1995 to 2005, Steve Jobs fired two members of the board of directors because they never disagreed with him.
Steve Jobs believed that board members who did not disagree with him were not bringing any value to Pixar.
Andrew Stanton proposed the creation of the "Brain Trust" at Pixar to serve as an internal replacement for the external feedback previously provided by Tom Schumacher of Disney.
Steve Jobs was intentionally excluded from Pixar's Brain Trust meetings because his powerful personality would negatively alter the group's dynamics.
Steve Jobs's strategy for Pixar's IPO was to raise capital to enable the company to renegotiate with Disney as an equal partner after their initial contract.
A major source of conflict between Steve Jobs and Michael Eisner was Eisner's refusal to count "Toy Story 3" toward their five-picture deal, despite its theatrical quality.
Bob Iger's first major initiative as CEO was to acquire Pixar, a move he had to fight for against a Disney board that considered it too risky and expensive.
Ed Catmull asserts that former General Electric executives applied Jack Welch's management principles at Boeing, which contributed to Boeing's subsequent problems.
Pixar was intentionally structured to ensure technical staff and artists were considered peers, avoiding the "first-class, second-class" employee dynamic common at other studios.
Ed Catmull observed that every piece of feedback Steve Jobs gave on a Pixar film had already been raised by someone else within the company.