I don’t typically read business books, but Lawrence Levy’s book, “To Pixar and Beyond” isn’t a typical business book.  There’s a warm, lovable fuzziness to it that is, in my mind, antithetical to the typical business ethos.  It's a jarring cognitive dissonance, for me, at least. 



It may help to explain my hatred of the business world. 



I believe that the MBAification of the world started about fifty years ago when colleges and universities across the country started downplaying humanities and started

I don’t typically read business books, but Lawrence Levy’s book, “To Pixar and Beyond” isn’t a typical business book.  There’s a warm, lovable fuzziness to it that is, in my mind, antithetical to the typical business ethos.  It's a jarring cognitive dissonance, for me, at least. 



It may help to explain my hatred of the business world. 



I believe that the MBAification of the world started about fifty years ago when colleges and universities across the country started downplaying humanities and started emphasizing pro-capitalist pro-big business agendas and curriculum.  The Arts were quickly being replaced with the Art of the Deal. 



Subsequently, a business model began being applied to fields to which such models had previously never been applied nor should have been applied---education, health care, church administration.  Arguably, this has destroyed the very foundation of these fields and has created many more problems than it has solved. 



It has created an education system that is floundering miserably in this country, as a strong anti-public education campaign led by conservative politicians has led to entire school systems failing kids in droves while diverting federal funds from public schools to private and charter schools, which have repeatedly been proven by study after study to be completely ineffectual and/or detrimental to student learning. 



It has created a health care system run not by doctors and health care workers but by insurance companies and pharmaceutical companies; a system that only the wealthy or those willing and able to pay enormous premiums can afford to use while those with no insurance or limited insurance are literally dying because of their lack of access. 



It has created megachurches who feed off the weak-minded, allowing some pastors to bring in incomes rivalling CEOs of small companies, while cutting ministries and programs that have historically helped the community by offering food aid, clothing, and shelter to the homeless and the poor. 



Business has created a country ruled by politicians ruled by money, who worship at the feet of Mammon, who care nothing for the people beneath them. 



Business has created a society guided by greed, where compassion and empathy are signs of weakness, where helping the environment and saving people’s lives are not cost-effective, and where bullying is a legitimate tactic to get ahead in the workplace, in classrooms, in relationships, in politics. 



Business enabled Trump to become our president-elect. 



So, yeah, I basically hate the business world, and I pretty much have no respect for people with MBAs.  I truly believe that they are ruining the world. 



Then I read “To Pixar and Beyond” about a company owned by one of the most famous business assholes in the world---Steve Jobs---who calls in a (gasp!)  corporate lawyer to save this company, which by all rights should have folded years ago, and take it public. 



And I enjoyed it.  A business book.  A book chock-full of ridiculous business terms like “stock options” and “IPOs” and “profit motive”.  A book in which the narrator is a stinkin’ corporate lawyer. 



Damn you, Levy, for making me like you!  And making me kind of like Steve Jobs!  And for educating me on how start-up companies work!  And for saving Pixar! 



No, seriously, thanks a hella ton for that last point.  I love Pixar.  My wife and I own every single Disney/Pixar movie ever made, on VHS, DVD, and blu-ray.  My three-year-old daughter has grown up loving the “Toy Story” movies and the “Cars” movies and “Finding Nemo” and “Finding Dory” and “Brave” and, well, all of them. 



Pixar is one of the only Hollywood studios doing anything even remotely original and unique.  While Hollywood churns out sequel after sequel or remake after remake or some obscure comic book adaptation of a superhero nobody has ever heard of or a big-budget epic film based on a video game, Pixar actually makes movies in which story and character development actually matter. 



Which is why Levy’s story is so fascinating and, well, almost suspenseful, because the little computer animation company that could was almost the little computer animation company that never was. 



Levy starts the book with the phone call in 1994 that changed his life, literally. 



Jobs had acquired Pixar in the late-‘80s from George Lucas’s Lucasfilm.  He had hoped to turn it into a revolutionary imaging computer and software company, but it had gone nowhere.  When Levy was asked by Jobs to join the Pixar team as the chief financial officer, he found a company on the brink of going under.  Any other CEO would have pulled the plug years before, but Jobs saw something special in Pixar.  Over a short amount of time, Levy did as well. 



Pixar had everything riding on the success of their first full-length computer-animated motion picture, “Toy Story”, which was a few storyboards and about 20 minutes of a very early-stages scene when Levy joined. 



Jobs and Levy had extraordinary confidence and faith in the brilliance and creativity of the Pixar team, led by John Lasseter. 



Unfortunately, the company needed funding, and the best way to do that was to go public. 



There was also the issue of a convoluted contractual agreement worked out between Pixar and Disney’s then-CEO, Michael Eisner, who was notorious for his lackluster and (some would say) disastrous mismanagement of Disney. 



“To Pixar and Beyond” should not be a book that I found fascinating or endearing in any way, but I did, and I’m glad I read it. 



It gave me faith and hope that not all businesses are bad, that not all business people are assholes and not all companies are evil, soul-sucking monstrosities bent on world domination and/or destruction. 



I still think the majority of them are, though... Just sayin’...