“A delightful book about the creation of Pixar from the inside . . . and like a good Pixar film, it’ll put a smile on your face.” —Andrew Ross Sorkin, The New York Times
Winner, Axiom Business Book Award * Fortune Favorite Books of the Year Top Pick * Amazon Best Book of the Year in Business & Leadership
After he was dismissed from Apple in the early 1990s, Steve Jobs turned his attention to a little-known graphics company he owned called Pixar. One day, out of the blue, Jobs called Lawrence Levy, a Harvard-trained lawyer and executive with whom he’d never spoken before. He hoped to persuade Levy to help him pull Pixar back from the brink of failure.
This is the extraordinary story of what happened next: how Jobs and Levy concocted and pulled off a highly improbable plan that transformed Pixar into the Hollywood powerhouse it is today. Levy offers a masterful firsthand account of how Pixar rose from humble beginnings, what it was like to work so closely with Jobs, and how Pixar’s story offers profound lessons that can apply to our professional and personal lives. To Pixar and Beyond reveals how a struggling computer animation company became one of the greatest entertainment studios of all time.
“[A] delightful book about finance, creative genius, workplace harmony, and luck.” —Fortune
“Part business book and part thriller—a tale that’s every bit as compelling as the ones Pixar tells in its blockbuster movies.” —Dan Lyons, bestselling author of Disrupted
“A natural storyteller . . . an inside look at the business and a fresh, sympathetic view of Jobs.” —Success Magazine
LAWRENCE LEVY is a former Silicon Valley attorney and business executive who was personally recruited by Steve Jobs in 1994 as CFO and member of the Office of the President of Pixar Animation Studios. Levy 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. Levy 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, Levy earned degrees from Indiana University and Harvard Law School. He lives with his wife, Hillary, in Palo Alto, California.