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Making Ideas Happen

Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

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Making Ideas Happen

Written by: Scott Belsky
Narrated by: Don Hagen
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How the world's leading innovators push their ideas to fruition, time and time again. Edison famously said that genius is 1 percent inspiration, 99 percent perspiration. Ideas for new businesses, solutions to the world's problems, and artistic breakthroughs are common, but great execution is rare. According to Scott Belsky, the capacity to make ideas happen can be strengthened by anyone willing to build their organizational habits and harness the forces of community. That's why he founded Behance, a company that helps creative people and teams across industries develop these skills. Belsky has spent six years studying the habits of especially productive creative people and teams—the ones who make their ideas happen time and time again.

After interviewing hundreds of successful creatives, he has compiled their most powerful-and often counterintuitive-practices, such as:

  • Generate ideas in moderation and act without conviction
  • Reduce all projects to just three primary components
  • Encourage fighting within your team
  • Seek competition and share ideas liberally

In an increasingly flexible and entrepreneurial environment, creative minds have the opportunity (and responsibility) to solve and change industries—but they can only do that if they overcome the obstacles. While many of us obsess about discovering great new ideas, Belsky shows why it's better to develop the capacity to make ideas happen-a capacity that endures over time.

©2010 Scott Belsky (P)2010 Gildan Media Corp
Entrepreneurship Management & Leadership Personal Success Small Business & Entrepreneurship Business Career Management Leadership Habits
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What the critics say

"If you care about your art, your job or your market, you really have no choice. This is strategy and tactics, concepts and how-to, all in one on a topic that's often overlooked." (Seth Godin, author of Linchpin)
"Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. This audio book helps you with the hard part." (Guy Kawasaki, co-founder of Alltop and former chief evangelist of Apple)
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Most Relevant
There are several ideas from the book that I think are especially worth retaining:

-Ideas don't happen because they're great. They happen because someone takes responsibility for executing them.
-Every project should continually generate identifiable next actions.
-Creative energy has to survive the boring middle of a project.
-Organization protects creativity rather than restricting it.
-Accountability increases the probability that ideas will actually ship.
-Feedback should move projects forward, not merely generate discussion.
-You must become comfortable killing, postponing, or ignoring ideas so your strongest ideas receive enough attention.

I'd recommend Making Ideas Happen particularly strongly to producers, photographers, filmmakers, designers, entrepreneurs, writers, creative directors and anyone who regularly finds themselves saying:

“I have so many ideas.”

Because the book eventually forces a more uncomfortable question:

How many of them have you finished? That is where Making Ideas Happen earns its value. It doesn't try to make you more creative. It tries to make your creativity operational. And for someone trying to build a serious body of creative work, that may ultimately be the more important skill.

So go forth and make those ideas happen!

Making Ish Happen!

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