In the class I’m teaching at CMU on entrepreneurship we talked about setting a long term vision for your company. I used Jim Collin’s research as a framework for the discussion, in particular setting a Big Hairy Audacious Goal (BHAG) and having a vivid description of what life will be like when that goal is met (See Building Your Company’s Vision). Among other qualities a good BHAG should be inspiring and take 10 to 30 years to accomplish.
Of course this got me thinking about PDI’s vision of making fully animated feature films. We set that as a specific goal somewhere around 1984, a good decade before it was possible. It served as an invaluable beacon for all the decisions we would subsequently make – doing character animation, continuing to produce our own short films, expanding into film effects work, and on and on. It also kept us from veering off track with opportunities to sell our software or do work for non-entertainment clients. It was a big, hairy, audacious goal even without an acronym for it.
The problem with a BHAG is once you’ve done it, then what? And that in fact is one of the reasons I ended up leaving PDI/DreamWorks.
For my class I tried to find inspiring example BHAGs from animation and effects companies. That effort fell flat. Even from DreamWorks and Pixar. They all basically said “We’re going to keep doing what we’re doing,” but with much more flowery language.
So I set out to determine what the BHAG is that I would set if I was running an animation company today, and it came really fast. Simply put: “Integrate our characters into people’s lives.” Granted, it’s a bit more obscure than “Make fully animated feature films,” so let me paint the ‘vivid description’: Ten or twenty years from now mobile devices as we know them will be non-existent. Instead you’ll be connected via some sort of head’s up augmented reality display. Maybe it’s a pair of glasses with little monitors in them, or maybe they are using a laser to paint on the back of your retina, or perhaps we’ll all have jacks on the backs of our skulls – it doesn’t matter to me, I’m just sure it’s going to happen. That display and adjoining audio input will be projecting information all over our environment. But you don’t want a Terminator-style view of streams of data in front of you, you don’t want web pages popping up or maps overlaid or floating arrows and words. You just want a companion to deal with all that for you. When you need driving directions you want to follow him down the street. Lost in the mall? He’ll take you where you need to go for what you want, and negotiate the best deal for you ahead of time. Reservations? Tickets? Check out payments? Just have your concierge buddy take care of it. This goes on and on with new ways to interface with your social network, read a book, watch a movie, experience music, create art…
What would this company do today to work towards that BHAG? Here’s a few things I’d start with:
- Interactive games with the characters. Focus specifically on realtime 3D even though that’s not the trend right now. Small and fast to create, the point is to learn and iterate quickly. The characters should have to display some level of independent intelligence, not just avatars for the player.
- Augmented Reality apps – develop deep AR chops for putting characters in real environments. Again, lots of small projects that get released to an audience. Maybe games, but I’d probably focus more on “practical apps” to help people solve problems or get information. These should also be mobile to develop skills in working with an unpredictable environment.
- APIs, APIs, APIs. Use everyone else’s APIs. Google, Google Maps, Facebook, Foursquare, Twitter, etc. There are tons of companies out there with useful data you can start to take advantage of. What kind of fun app can be created with your characters that use more than one of these APIs? Build a zillion of those.
- Start building relationships with companies and research institutions working on all the harder problems, like the hardware side. Do projects with them.
The point of all of this work is not to build that company today, but to have all the talent and tools necessary to be ready for the market when it does exist. And if you do it right you’ll be building a product catalog and loyal customers along the way.
BTW, If you know of a great BHAG from an animation or effects company please forward it on – I’d love to know it.
