How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity | 7 weird jobs that are well-paying but nobody knows about, according to a viral Reddit thread | Toxicity in Gaming Is Dangerous. Here's How to Stand Up to It | OpenAI’s Failed Experiment in Governance

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� � � � � � How Pixar Fosters Collective Creativity - Harvard Business Review    Many people believe that good ideas are rarer and more valuable than good people. Ed Catmull, president of Pixar and Disney Animation Studios, couldn’t disagree more. That notion, he says, is rooted in a misguided view of creativity that exaggerates the importance of the initial idea in developing an original product. And it reflects a profound misunderstanding of how to manage the large risks inherent in producing breakthroughs. In filmmaking and many other kinds of complex product development, creativity involves a large number of people from different disciplines working effectively together to solve a great many inherently unforeseeable problems. The trick to fostering collective creativity, Catmull says, is threefold: Place the creative authority for product development firmly in the hands of the project leaders (as opposed to corporate executives); build a culture and processes that encourage people to share their work-in-progress and support one another as peers; and dismantle the natural barriers that divide disciplines. Mindful of the rise and fall of so many tech companies, Catmull has also sought ways to continually challenge Pixar’s assumptions and search for the flaws that could destroy its culture. Clear values, constant communication, routine postmortems, and the regular injection of outsiders who will challenge the status quo are necessary but not enough to stay on the rails. Strong leadership is essential to make sure people don’t pay lip service to those standards. For example, Catmull comes to the orientation sessions for all new hires, where he talks about the mistakes Pixar has made so people don’t assume that just because the company is successful, everything it does is right. Continued here � � � � � � Don't like ads? Go ad-free with TradeBriefs Premium 7 weird jobs that are well-paying but nobody knows about, according to a viral Reddit thread - Business Insider    A Reddit user asked which jobs were relatively unknown but lucrative and the post went viral. Thousands of users responded with obscure jobs they have or know about, and many shared what the jobs consist of and how they got their jobs. A Reddit user said he makes teeth on a computer using CAD/CAM software for dental laboratories. "I work remotely and do pretty well." A teeth designer, often referred to as a dental CAD/CAM technician, is a skilled professional who uses specialized computer software to design dental restorations like crowns and bridges. Continued here � � � � � � Toxicity in Gaming Is Dangerous. Here's How to Stand Up to It - WIRED    What happens in video games does not stay in video games. Sometimes, this is a good thing: Decades of research suggest that video games often influence players in positive ways, such as increased psychological well-being, enhanced problem-solving and spatial-rotation skills, and even increased interest in STEM fields. But too often, these benefits of video gaming are counteracted by rampant toxic behaviors. In the world of online gaming, this includes sexual harassment, hate speech, threats of violence, doxing (publicizing others’ private information), spamming, flaming (strong emotional statements meant to elicit negative reactions), griefing (using the game in unintended ways to harass others), and intentionally inhibiting the performance of one’s own team. Perpetrators of such behavior tend to be younger, male, and high in emotional reactivity and impulsivity. These disinhibited behaviors are fueled by the anonymity some virtual environments afford and by players seeing them as widespread and acceptable behaviors, which might help explain why toxicity is somewhat contagious—exposure in previous games has been shown to increase the likelihood that a player will commit toxic acts in future games. Players often rationalize such toxicity as a normal part of gaming. But, as new research shows, this behavior has significant, long-term negative effects on players, especially those who do not fall into the stereotypical gamer demographic of young white males. Despite studies suggesting that women are equally or more skilled than men in video games when given the same amount of playing time, they are more likely than their male counterparts to be targets of toxicity. And studies suggest toxicity is more harmful to women, not only with respect to psychological well-being but also because certain coping mechanisms—like not using voice chat, to hide gender—puts women at a disadvantage within the game itself. Such experiences discourage women and girls from playing, which means they are less likely to gain the cognitive benefits of gaming such as spatial rotation skills, which are associated with success in technological career paths—an area in which there is already rampant gender disparity. Studies also suggest that exposure to gender stereotypes within games potentially causes negative attitudes about women in other stereotyped domains, such as STEM fields. Continued here � � � � � � OpenAI's Failed Experiment in Governance - Harvard Business Review    OpenAI has undoubtedly succeeded in its product innovations, with ChatGPT. But its governance innovations have failed spectacularly. Put in place to guard against the abuse of its product, the company’s unusual structure — a nonprofit that owns a for-profit — proved unpredictable and subject to the whims of its directors. There’s a reason the most successful startups stick to best practice: A more traditional governance structure would help OpenAI to scale while making the development of its technology more predictable. “Engineering is easy. People are hard.” That quote comes from technologist Bill Coughran, whose career has spanned Bell Labs, Google, and the famed venture-capital firm Sequoia.  Continued here

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