Steve Jobs wasn't ever really a "creative force" at Disney.

So true, but somehow a lot of people don't know it. He was just a facilitator at Pixar. A damn good facilitator, one who made it all happen, but still he wasn't Pixar's visionary (like he was Apple's). Lasseter deserves all the credit for that part.

Actually you're wrong on that part. Steve was the visionary.

He was the one who saw Pixar as being a brand (i.e. a modern day Disney) rather than just an anonymous studio. Kids are buying and trusting the Pixar brand not the Disney brand. So to be able to set that all up (e.g. equal billing) required a vision for what the company could be.

Steve was responsible for Pixar. John was responsible for Pixar's movies.

Um, didn't the real history go slightly differently?

Steve Jobs invested in Pixar because of the hardware. When that didn't fly, the shorts and commercials being done by Lasseter (that paid the bills) turned into a gamble to make a full-length movie. This whole "branding" thing didn't come until the first movie was a success.

Although Jobs' negotiation with Disney wrt distribution included the concession from Disney that the Pixar logo would be of the same size and prominence as the Disney one. As far as I'm aware this was pretty much unheard of.

I would suggest that visionary is never having the prediction of exactly how it will turn out but having the faith that this is the right direction and the details will resolve in time

You make "visionary" sound equivalent to "simpleton".

The difference between visionary and simpleton is the scale of money involved.

THIS

Pixar was the success coming from the genius and hard work of three people:

- Ed Catmull for all the tech

- Steve Jobs for the money, the vision through a dark maze and negotiating the first deal with Disney (Toy Story). Yes, he had second guesses, yes, Pixar almost became a division of Philips, etc

- John Lasseter. CalArts. Kicked out of Disney for believing computers were the future, 'hanged in there' at Pixar, as an 'Interface Designer', responsible for giving the human touch to Pixar movies, even the first ones (Luxo Jr, Adventures of Andre and Wally B - pre Pixar) probably helped Steve Jobs 'see the light' on Pixar

Probably the wrong choice of words. He did help bring in a lot of creative people, however. I'm just wondering if this will follow the same line of thinking - there's quite a lot of talented people who work for the Lucas properties.

Do you think so? To my mind, the set of people in that industry, as creatives, who would think "Hmm, I dunno. I'm not really sold / excited about the idea of working for Disney / Pixar / Lucasfilm... Oh, Steve Jobs is involved? That changes ... everything." (sorry, couldn't resist).

These companies appear, at least to me, as the pinnacle of "career as a creative artist in film" employers - I doubt the personality of a board member / part-owner, even one with as much going for him as Jobs did, was ever the deciding factor in their ability to lure talent.

Just one example of how he may have indirectly lured more talent than it may seem possible:

Jobs was the main driver of the creation of the innovative-layout of the Pixar HQ building. Lassater himself said that he truly believed that the way the building was structured led to better collaboration and creativity -- ie. a better environment, which would drive more people.

It's not that people think, "Jobs is involved -- yay!" Rather it's the culture that Jobs helped create and helped nurture that people would find attractive. Many, many other leaders with different priorities would likely end up inadvertently squashing the open collaboration and creativity that made Pixar successful to begin with, rather than nurture it, preventing success and preventing new talent from choosing Pixar.

I'd say the focus on quality product ended up being a creative force of its own.