In Guy Kawasaki's blog I found an interview to Polly LaBarre who is the co-author (with Bill Taylor) of the newly released book called Mavericks at Work: Why the Most Original Minds in Business Win

I would like to highlight the answer about the way Steve Jobs designed the architecture of the teams in order to ensure that collaboration occurred and that the learning process of the team was capitalized.

Question: What’s your assessment of Steve Jobs?

Answer: Steve Jobs is without a doubt a maverick who has forever changed the way we relate to computers and animated films. Jobs was smart enough to buy Pixar for $10 million in 1986 and then sell it to Disney this year for $7.4 billion, but he was even smarter to enlist Ed Catmull and John Lasseter to run the place.

What’s most remarkable about Pixar is that it has become the envy of Hollywood because it never went Hollywood. More than a few business pundits have modeled the corporation of the future on the Hollywood model of work: an ad-hoc collection of actors, producers, and technicians coming together around a script and financing and then disbanding when the film is finished. The problem with that model is that it allows for maximum flexibility and minimum loyalty. What’s more, it’s usually just when the film wraps that the people involved really figure out how to work together.

Turn that model on its head and you get Pixar’s version of the right way to make movies: a tight-knit company of long-term collaborators who stick together, learn from one another, and strive to improve with every production. A key component of that model is Pixar’s no-contract policy. Famous, talented directors like Brad Bird, Peter Docter, Andrew Stanton and Lee Unkrich all of whom could secure lucrative contracts with any studio are salaried employees of Pixar who contribute to all of the studio’s projects rather than just their own pet projects.

This model tackles one of the most enduring people problems in any industry: How do you not only attract wildly talented people to work in your company, but also get those wildly talented people to continuously produce great work together? Or, as Randy Nelson, dean of Pixar University puts it, How do you do art as a team sport? That question lies at the heart of Pixar’s design for work-and the answers include turning the workplace into a canvas for the work and putting everyone in the organization in a position to learn together.

The question is… How are you building your own teams does the architecture help or threatens the collaboration?