Practically Magic: Innovation and Impact Rarely Happen Overnight

1/25/2024

Life Advice, Personal Perspective, Creativity, Innovation

It is common for causal observers to see a big breakthrough, amazing creative achievement, or other big professional accomplishment from another and think to themselves "wow, that person must be super talented" or "they are so lucky!". And while talent and luck play a part in "success", what often gets less attention is the amount of work that goes into an "overnight success".

Complex and ambitious achievements usually take even more time and effort to come to fruition. A particularly interesting set of stories comes from the Walt Disney Company's Pixar division (before they become part of Disney) and Disney's venerable Imagineering unit.

Perhaps the name most synonymous with "magic" is Disney. The Walt Disney Company is dedicated to making magical experiences for its customers via its movies, shows, and, perhaps most prominently, its theme parks. The first park at Walt Disney World in Florida was literally named the Magic Kingdom when it opened in 1971. And having been to the park as a child, I can attest that it is, indeed, a magical place. Disney Parks are full of state-of-the-art attractions that can leave you speechless and wondering how they accomplished such feats.

If you are interested in learning more about what goes into creating the many fabulous rides and experiences at the Disney Parks, I highly recommend the Behind the Attraction series on the Disney+ streaming service. What struck me the most profoundly when watching episodes of this series was how much planning and work goes into creating (and updating) a Disney attraction. In essence, magical experiences come from hard work and planning, sometimes taking years to reach a final product.

Often, the Disney "Imagineers" must invent new technology to bring a ride to life. For example, the Indiana Jones Adventure ride at Disneyland in California relied on an entirely new ride vehicle invented by the Imagineers to simulate the motion of an off-road jeep. In fact, the Imagineering team at Disney holds over 500 patents for new technologies they have developed to create the unique rides and attractions at the parks.

Figure from US Patent # 5,623,878 filed by the Walt Disney Company in 1997 for the ride vehicle technology used in the Indiana Jones Adventure ride.

Experiential and Emotional Impact Through Technology & Innovation

At Disney they firmly believe that the story and experience should drive the design and execution of all they do and that they can iron out technical details to bring an idea to life. Disney rarely sacrifices practicality for the sake of creative quality and experiential impact on their customers.

Disney's Pixar Animations Studios (which was an independent company from 1986 until 2006 when it was acquired by the Walt Disney Company) perhaps best illustrates how dedication and commitment to one's craft combined with a passion for creating memorable experiences can produce amazing results.

Pixar invented new computer animated techniques and approaches beginning with its founding but its journey from start-up to box office hit maker took time. In some ways the technology had to catch up with the company's ambitions and its employees had to become more familiar and confident in the use of said technology. Pixar initially struggled with a business case focusing mostly on producing animated commercials in the 1980s and early 1990s to pay the bills. In 1991 the company numbered 42 employees (nearly the same size it was at its founding) as it removed hardware and software sales from its operations to focus on the core creative business. In that same year, Pixar signed an agreement with Disney to develop at least one computer-animated movie that Disney would market and distribute. That movie become Toy Story, which was released in November 1995 to critical acclaim and sensational audience reviewers on its way to earning nearly $400 million at the global box office (~$823 million in 2024 dollars).

This began a 20 YEAR run of amazing box office success for Pixar films with every movie they release from Toy Story 2 in 1999 to Inside Out in 2015 earning at least $500 million at the global box office with 2003's Finding Nemo hitting the $900+ million level and Toy Story 3 released in 2010 crossing $1 BILLION in ticket receipts (~$1.43 Billion in 2024 dollars). But if you watch the documentary The Pixar Story, you will realize that story is core to all they do. During its run of successful films from the mid-nineties to the 2010s, Pixar continued to push the envelope in what could be computer animated to drive new and novel story ideas from thousands of animated ants in A Bug's Life to life-like fur for Monsters Inc to water environments in Finding Nemo and human characters (with muscles) in The Incredibles. Technical innovation was core to making these stories come to life and making audiences feel connected to the worlds depicted in these films.

Pixar's success during that time was undoubtedly fueled by its willingness to grow and innovate with each new project, never resting on its laurels. But the technology served the stories they were telling, never dictating or limiting the narratives. In addition, those at the company will tell you that its operation was driven by a willingness for creative and technically gifted individuals from diverse backgrounds to collaborate on projects that were driven at their core by stories to make the audience feel something.

The lesson to take from this is, I think, is to not innovate just to innovate but to think about how a new technology or idea serves others. Does it help solve a critical problem? Does it make peoples' lives or society better in some way? Does it bring joy to the world? Does it provide entertainment and life lessons (in the case of many movies)? Innovation without impact will fall flat. If the technologies or innovative ideas you are leveraging aren't in service of something that improves peoples' lives, they rarely resonate. In Pixar's case, they leveraged technology to create characters and stories audiences cared about and that spoke to human challenges, struggles, and ultimately triumphs (even if many of their characters weren't human, they amazingly made us care about bugs and fish!).

"What most people call overnight success is actually the market suddenly realizing the value of a great product or service that had been kept in obscurity for too long while its creators refused to give up." - Entrepreneur and author Luis E. Romero, from Forbes

Another lesson from the Pixar story is the commitment and perseverance often required to see a novel concept "breakthrough". The conviction of Pixar's founders to stick to their core business over the first 5+ years as it gained its footing allowed it to be in a position to make Toy Story and what looked like an overnight success in 1995 after Toy Story's release was many years in the making. Pixar's animators developed their expertise on commercials and short films in the company's early years and realized producing a full-length computer animated film at its core is still an exercise in constructing a compelling and moving story. The combination of compelling narrative, endless storyboarding and editing (story development for a Pixar film can take YEARS), a committed and technically gifted team, and innovative technology allowed Pixar to create movie magic. The company and its employees gave audiences something they had never seen before and, in the process, left a lasting impact on the entertainment industry.

Learn more about the animation innovations Pixar pioneered in the video from Business Insider, below (and the follow-up video here):

Disney Magic In Real Life - Innovation and Iteration

Crafting of real-word experiences through physical rides and attractions requires another level of commitment. Examples of technical and impactful achievements in the Disney parks include the floating mountains in the Pandora - World of Avatar land within Disney's Animal Kingdom, the creation of Cars Land (based on the Pixar movie) and its mountain range at Disney's California Adventure Park, the Guardians of the Galaxy: Cosmic Rewind attraction at EPCOT, and Star Wars: Galaxy's Edge at Disney's Hollywood Studios. The combined efforts of designers and engineers led to the creation of immersive and unique experiences that help transport park visitors to locations they had only see on a movie screen before and in the process allows them to escape the worries and challenges of the real world, if only for a bit.

None of the work Disney does is easy, especially when it comes to building actual rides and landscapes people interact with in their parks. Imagineers blend creativity with modern technology and an understanding of human perception to create amazing experiences. And the more you learn about how they build attractions the more you appreciate how Imagineers not only invent new technologies to bring an attraction to life but often build on previous designs and take lessons from the design of past attractions to make new ones. There are so many examples including leveraging the technology from Test Track in Epcot (opened in 1999) for Cars Land's Radiator Springs Racers (opened in 2012) to improving on Big Thunder Mountain Railroad with new projection mapping technology and revolutionizing the classic Pirates of the Caribbean boat ride for the 21st Century with the installation of Pirates of the Caribbean: Battle for the Sunken Treasure (and use of technology to guide the boats through immersive sets) at Shanghai Disneyland. These examples highlight that Disney never stops innovating and improving, realizing that creating magical experiences requires learning from the past while constantly pushing the boundaries of technology and storytelling.

As mentioned earlier when discussing Pixar films, storytelling at its heart requires the need to make the recipient feel something, to care about the characters, relate to their challenges, and celebrate in their triumphs. To be an effective story it must relate to our human experiences including struggle, loss, love, friendship, and family and the realization that happily ever after is often the result of overcoming adversity in our lives.

The Story Comes Together

In my last post, I reflected on our human relationship to time. Recently, while watching the Behind the Attraction series on Disney+ that I mentioned above I learned about this amazing "nighttime spectacular" at Hong Kong Disneyland titled "Momentous". Learning about the history of creating this show we discover that when Hong Kong Disneyland was renovating and updating their castle, the technology for Momentous was literally built into the castle's redesign. The show has been described as "a love letter to the memories we make throughout our lives" and if you watch the video of it below you can see that the creators of this spectacular incorporate Disney and Pixar characters, stories, and songs over the past 30+ years from The Little Mermaid and The Lion King to Aladdin, Moana, and Up. Featured songs include classics like "Kiss the Girl", "You'll Be in My Heart", "A Whole New World" and lesser-known but appropriate songs like "Friends on the Other Side" from the Princess and the Frog and "Remember Me" from Coco.

The feelings the show generates are tied up in the audience's memories of Disney movies and it can only achieve the effect of moving onlookers due to the fact that it builds on the creative efforts of the thousands or animators, artists, and musicians who contributed to the creation of the content. In addition, the spectacular itself relies on a variety of technological advancements from the Disney Company including projection mapping technology, water screen projections, and sophistically timed pyrotechnics and fireworks that can be positioned with pinpoint accuracy via compressed air. The result of all these efforts is magical.

Live the Moment & Love the Memories - Momentous Nighttime Spectacular's Tagline

The show's "theme song", Love the Memory, that unites its various chapters has a super catchy and impactful chorus:
Time's always moving, we can't slow the hands
Won't last forever, so take every chance
To learn and to love and to dream and to dance
Live the moment and love the memory

Momentous's songs and storytelling remind us that life is a journey and ultimately consists of the impact we have on others and them on us. It is filled with highs and lows, love and loss, but through all these things we learn and grow, hopefully becoming better versions of ourselves in the process. A powerful notion, for sure.

Making Impact Everyday

While most of this post has contained reflections on the Walt Disney Company's and Pixar Animation Studios' quest to create memorable experiences through creativity, technology, and hard work, I think the lessons from their efforts can apply to everyone's work and life.

We often seek the "magical solution" to our problems or want a quick fix to the challenges we encounter. We want to lose weight NOW, we want to earn more NOW, we want to be more productive NOW, we want to be recognized for our achievements NOW. But these things are most often the result of consistent work and incremental improvements that slowly and steadily build on themselves to achieve the desired result. And sometimes, maybe even often, the end result of our efforts is more impactful than we could imagine when we begin on our journey. I don't think the creators of The Little Mermaid when it was released in 1989 would have ever imagined its scenes and songs would be projected on a water "screen" and physical castle at a Disney theme park in Hong Kong purpose built for these projections but that is what ultimately occurred.

Good content and story that touches us as human beings is timeless and transcends any specific media. Much the same way, each of us doing "good work" and making "good decisions" ultimately leads to good outcomes and impact in time. We all know deep down what is good and right and will ultimately lead to the outcomes we want for ourselves (eat more healthily, exercise more, stress less, make more time for those we care about, help others etc...) but the consistent commitment to these actions over time (often in the face of very little short-term "results") is what is needed to produce the magical (ie, impactful) results we are looking for.

It is also worth mentioning here that we often cannot fully predict how our work and actions now will impact our (and others) future. And we shouldn't necessarily try to map all our actions to some future state because the future is always in flux. Rather, we should work to do good and important work now and realize that the positive impacts of this will resonate over time. This work may also be built on and improved upon by others to produce further innovation and impact, as is often the case with the Disney attractions and experiences mentioned above.

So, what ideas do you want to share with the world?
How can you contribute your gifts and talents to society to impact others?

See my Career Exploration 101 piece to help with your self-reflection

What story are you trying to tell about yourself?
How can you collaborate with others as part of a larger narrative and goal?

Learn more about volunteering and the impact of cultivating serendipity through your relationships

The Often Long, Methodical Grind to "Success"

So, what's my story? How do I see my gifts and talents contributing to the world?

Well, I have always been interested in helping others, even from a young age. I am fairly empathetic and find a lot of joy in teaching and mentoring others. I do this to some extent in my day job helping support postdoctoral researchers at Virginia Tech. I also use this blog and platforms like LinkedIn to share resources, programs, and opportunities with a wide audience. My hope is by doing this I can help others realize how their skills, interests, and values can be applied productively to activities and careers that benefit the world in distinct and important ways. I firmly believe we all have something to contribute. Personally, I have been working on building my platform and finding my voice so I can reach and impact more people, including those of you reading this post or leveraging the information shared on my blog and website.

And the statistics show I am slowly making progress in these areas.

In a blog post from January 2021 I spoke to the fact that returns on our efforts to build skills, invest in our networks, and growth our brand often compound. Seeing measurable growth in these metrics can be slow at first but many online activities result in network effects where knowledge accumulation and impact can increase over time non-linearly. For example, building one skill early on helps you develop a related one more easily next time or one connection can lead to another. Similarly, the publication of one piece of creative or scholarly work can lead to citations by or engagement with others who then amplify your work to their networks and, in the process, help your ideas and content spread more rapidly than you could manage alone.

I figured now, three years from when I spoke to the compounding returns I was seeing from my creative and scholarly works, would be good time to revisit the stats. For context, I launched this personal website in August 2014 as I began my postdoc position at Vanderbilt University. I figured I need to work on building my professional brand as a neuroscientist at the time and later launched this blog in April 2019 after having written pieces on my postdoc experience for the NIH BEST website (see those archived here). The blog launch was an attempt to build up a writing portfolio for potential future use in my career. I also enjoyed the process of sharing resources, advice, and research focused on a variety of topics from career and professional development to Ph.D. career pathways, the job search, and neuroscience findings with others.

Visits to my personal website have grown over the years from humble beginnings, illustrating that good content and resources will ultimately find an audience and resonate, in time.

As you can see from the chart above that only reports my personal website traffic data over full calendar years, for 5 YEARS yearly unique visits to my website were under 2,000 and from 2015 to 2017 struggled to cross 1,000 (in 2017 the number of unique site visits for the year was 1,068 or an average of 89 per month). Beginning in 2020, however, visitors to the site began to rapidly grow (rising 243% from 2019 to 2020 and another 117% from 2020 to 2021). Essentially, unique visits to my site more than tripled from 2019 to 2020 and then more than doubled from that level from 2020 to 2021. Growth has slowed since then but now I average more unique site visits per month than I did in all of any year from 2015 to 2017: average monthly visits August - December 2023: 753 versus unique visits compared to 341, 476, and 626 unique visits in the years 2015, 2016, and 2017, respectively.

Compounding growth like the stats mentioned above is hard for us to wrap our minds around.

In the case of my website, growth in visits is most likely the result of several factors:
1) In 2021 I launched a newsletter (now with 181 subscribers) to share resources and readings with interested individuals, where I also highlight my new blog posts as well as a few select posts from my blog archive
2) As I create more content there is more for a visitor to my website to engage with
3) I have added content beyond the blog over the years including job search resources, funding resources, and a growing list of career and professional development research studies
4) I often point to past content in new posts so individuals can "rediscover" older posts/content and this may, in turn lead to the growth in overall views of my content
5) As I grow my network and professional brand outside my website, when I point to blog pieces or resources on LinkedIn or X/Twitter more individuals see my posts on these platforms

I also believe well-written and useful content ultimately resonates with people and hopefully I am providing that via this platform.

But my own journey to greater reach and impact has not happened overnight. It requires commitment and dedication. I have written 55 blog posts over the 57 months from April 2019 (when I launched my blog) to now, January 2024, or nearly one post per month. I try to consistently share something interesting and thought provoking here. Mostly I do it for myself, to keep my writing skills sharp. But I also do it for those who read these posts and in the process hopefully learn something or are made to think more introspectively about their lives and the impact they can have on the world. Sometimes this is accomplished through a resource or process I share to aid readers in their career and professional development but other times it is through sharing an insight into neuroscience research, like findings illustrating the power of our mindsets and beliefs. In a way, I seek to inspire others to take steps to improve their lives, whether that be spending more time with loved ones or realizing that finding fulfilling work is a process. I plan to keep doing this hard work (this post alone is probably the culmination of at least 30 hours of research, writing, and revision) because I think I have something important to say and I hope it helps my readers live better, more fulfilled, and more impactful lives.

Growing One's Network & Scholarly Impact

In my blog post on network effects from January 2021 I also mentioned LinkedIn as a powerful tool for professional networking and how one's reach on the platform can grow with both a commitment to engaging on it and time to allow for growth. For a superb guide to leveraging the platform for career success, including building your network and engaging in career exploration, see the 2022 book Linked: Conquer LinkedIn. Get Your Dream Job. Own Your Future. by Garriott and Schifeling.

Over the years the number of my LinkedIn connections continues to grow as I interact with new colleagues and coworkers, meet people at professional conferences, or work with new leaders and volunteers in organizations I am involved in. Additionally, individuals will reach out to me to connect and I almost never turn down a personalized LinkedIn connection request.

I joined LinkedIn in April 2013 and by the end of that year had 43 connections. I really worked to expand my network on the platform during my postdoc position, which began in August 2014. In the graph below you can see the steady rise in my cumulative LinkedIn connections for calendar year 2014 to 2023. Steady investments in leveraging the platform have resulted in my total connections increasing 36-fold over 10 years.

Big things can come from small beginnings and consistent effort.

Over the past few years I have leveraged LinkedIn's "Creator Mode" to better broadcast the content and resources I share and have moved away from gathering connections (Creator Mode replaces the default network option on LinkedIn from "Connect" to "Follow"). In 2023, my follower count grew by 19.5% and now allows the content and resources I share on career development, the job search, networking, mentorship, and more to reach thousands of people. Through the technological platform that is LinkedIn I am able to amplify my impact, helping more people learn of opportunities and resources to assist them in their career development and professional journeys.

I firmly believe LinkedIn is a powerful multiplier for networking and brand building that you simply cannot ignore as a professional in the 21st Century. So, start investing in that platform today.

As an administrator who supports early career researchers (graduate students and postdocs in particular), I understand that growing one's scholarly profile is essential to academic success. One of the most important metrics for a scholar is one's citation count as it indicates other researchers acknowledge your work in theirs. By definition, citations of your work take time to accumulate as your work must be disseminated first (passing through an often lengthy and grueling peer review process to get published), others must read and cite it, and then they must also publish their work before your citation is registered in various systems (Google Scholar, Scopus, Web of Science). So, it can take years for citations to accumulate on your work. This can sometimes discourage early career researchers as they don't feel they are gaining traction at the beginning. Patience and persistence is required in one's academic scholarship. If you are putting out work that contributes to your field by asking important questions and addressing critical topics, it will eventually be cited. It also takes time and some promotion to help get your work discovered.

Citation counts per year of my scholarly work from Google Scholar.

My first peer-reviewed publication was in February 2012 and I did not start seeing citations of it until 2013. Over the years I published more publications in neuroscience from 2012 until 2019 (and to a lesser extent now as a researcher interested in mentorship and the faculty job search) and slowly the citations of this work grew along with the number of my peer-reviewed publications. So, the chart above is the result of continuing to publish, even as an academic administrator, and letting time work for my prior work's visibility.

You can certainly see in the Google Scholar stats the effect of me transitioning from postdoctoral researcher to postdoctoral affairs administrator in January 2019 and a stunting in my citation momentum in 2020 but in June 2020 I was listed as an author on my first non-neuroscience paper, focused on a survey-based analysis of the academic job market which led to new connections and research directions for me. Recently, I was involved in important work on mentorship of which our analysis of faculty mentoring experiences was published in December 2023. I expect to continue to work in these areas as a postdoctoral affairs administrator as these topics relate to my work supporting this population and, as a result, my scholarly output may increase in the coming years. And while it is nice to put out work that gets recognized and cited, that isn't really why I do it. Rather, I try to be part of teams contributing important insights into processes that need improvement in higher education including the hiring of faculty members and providing increased support and training for aspiring and new faculty members.

And though I don't actively publish in the neuroscience area anymore, my past research is still being cited and contributing to new knowledge in reward processing, decision making, and substance abuse risk. That prior work is, in effect, still having an impact. When you publish scientific findings, you are leaving a legacy and contributing to the broad, upward trajectory of human knowledge and progress. When you are in the thick of the scholarly work, though, you can sometimes forget this but know that "good work" can have an impact and though it might not immediately be recognized that does not mean it won't be of value to future researchers.

Your Mileage May Vary

Before wrapping up this piece I want to emphasize that the personal metrics presented above reflect my priorities in brand building (personal website, LinkedIn followers) and networking (LinkedIn connections). Growing one's scholarly metrics is mostly out of your direct control but ultimately does partially depend on producing good work consistently that others value. The activities and platforms you leverage to measure your "success" could look very different. The metrics you care about may also differ from those I shared.

Everyone's goals are unique and the pathway to achieving them distinct. I hope seeing how my metrics and impact grew from small beginnings with time drives home the point that if you invest in activities important to you, their reach and impact can expand through consistent effort and commitment over many years. The key is to decide what you value in terms of your personal and professional growth and invest your time in those areas. Success won't come overnight but I believe you can increase the odds of making an impact through dedicated action that is genuine, internally motivated by your values, and leverages your unique skills and gifts.

Don't under-estimate the power of network effects on growing your reach, impact, and career.

Final Thoughts

In today's post, hopefully you can see that to have an impact you have to start by taking action to share your knowledge and gifts with the world. That looks different for each of us. It might be putting out creative works or thought pieces on the internet, it could be publishing scientific and scholarly papers, or making YouTube videos explaining complex research topics to the public. It could be as simple (and important) as showing a student in your research group how to perform a new experiment or analysis (ie, mentoring them). Whatever you are doing and sharing, the process requires engaging with others in some way. You can also take advantage of network effects to ensure your message is being amplified by reaching others you don't know but who could benefit (ie, your connections shares it with their connections or the student you teach shares the knowledge with another and then another and so on and so forth). Only by sharing our skills, talents, and ideas with others can we truly spread them. Similarly, others can only build off your ideas if they know about them. So put your thoughts out there in the world!

Magical outcomes, which we might rightfully call innovation, begin with novel ideas that through collaboration with others and the combination of hard work, creativity, and technical know-how result in real-world impact. The impact might be creative, scholarly, or entrepreneurial. To achieve these results, though, requires a person to reach and impact others and in the process make their lives better - more informed, more efficient, more joyous, more fun, or more meaningful. The final result can often to an outsider seem like magic or overnight success but it rarely is that. Rather, consistent effort, belief in your craft, and the right group of people in your network combined with, yes, some luck, is essential.

Furthermore, the impact from one's creative or innovative efforts will only endure if you and those who come after you build off prior work and knowledge to make it even more impactful, allowing it to compound to a level of scope and reach its original creator could never have imagined. In the process these efforts hopefully move others to contribute to making the world a happier, healthier, safer, and more prosperous place through the deployment of their own gifts, skills, and actions. That's when the magic happens.

Reflections Blog

Practically Magic: Innovation and Impact Rarely Happen Overnight

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