Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality - Hardcover

Belsky, Scott

Hardcover

ISBN 10: 159184312X ISBN 13: 9781591843122

Publisher: Portfolio, 2010

Synopsis

How the world's leading innovators push their ideas to fruition again and 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 developed by anyone willing to develop their organizational habits and leadership capability. 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 creative people and teams that are especially productive-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:

ˇGenerate ideas in moderation and kill ideas liberally
ˇPrioritize through nagging
ˇEncourage fighting within your team

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.

About this title

Review

Amazon Exclusive: Seth Godin Reviews Making Ideas Happen

Seth Godin is the author of Linchpin, Tribes, The Dip, Purple Cow, All Marketers Are Liars, and Permission Marketing, as well as other international bestsellers. He is consistently one of the 25 most widely read bloggers in the English language. Read his exclusive Amazon guest review of Making Ideas Happen:

Should you buy a book that will make you uncomfortable?

More questions: Why is it so difficult to ship good ideas out the door? Why do committees show up and wreck the purity of your idea? Why do people avoid doing the hard work of actually bringing their work to the market?

I'll tell you why: Because it's safe. Ideas that never ship are never criticized. Faceless committees accept the blame for tepid products that were probably better off in the warehouse. And managers in search of a place to hide can best hide behind the unshipped product, the unrealized idea and the system gone wrong.

Scott Belsky has your number. He's seen it all before. He knows your excuses, he's seen your shtick and he knows all the ways to avoid doing the work. In this book, Scott's not giving you any place to hide.

There. Do you still want to read his book?

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

From the Back Cover

Praise For Making Ideas Happen
"Ideas are easy. Implementation is hard. This book helps you with the hard part." -GUY KAWASAKI, Co-founder of Alltop and former chief evangelist of Apple 
"Making Ideas Happen is timely and vital to a new generation of creative leaders. Ideas are important, but executing on those ideas is the crucial component that so many of us forget about.Great execution is rare, and Belsky lays out practical principles and a clear plan for getting things done. I highly recommend this book!" -BRAD LOMENICK, Executive Director, Catalyst 
"From his years spent understanding how the most productive entrepreneurs and creative minds operate, Scott Belsky provides a compendium of the knowledge one needs to turn a great idea into something tangible. This is a book about execution, and when it comes to going from idea to a real business, execution is everything." -JOHN BATELLE, Co-founder of Wired and Boing Boing, founder of Federated Media 
"If your creative team or organization struggles to implement their best ideas, or if you find that your own creative projects languish unfinished, you need Making Ideas Happen. -TERESA AMABILE, Prof. of Business Administration, Dir. of Research, Harvard Business School 
"In just one volume, Belsky shows how to execute simply, boldly, powerfully. He reveals the forces and methods that push projects to completion -and how they are accessible to all of us. Practical and perfect ways to implement your ideas with peace of mind." -LEO BABAUTA, Author of ZenHabits.net and The Power of Less 
"I hear people talking all the time about great ideas that never come to life. This book is like a Swiss Army knife for ideas. It offers step-by-step tools to turn ideas into action, and is full of wonderful and enlightening stories of those who have made their ideas happen." -JI LEE, Creative Director at Google Creative Lab and Founder of the Bubble Project 
"Scott Belsky has observed how designers think and has created a way to help them make the complex clear -and the actionable achievable- within the rush of creativity that defines their mind's workspace. His ideas provide an effective way to manage ideation, iteration, and execution." -RICHARD GREFÉ, CEO of AIGA 
"Belsky's approach has made my life even simpler. Making Ideas Happen demonstrates that ideas of any magnitude are achievable by simply taking one step at a time. Belsky offers an illustrated map to get to the destination of your great ideas." -SCOTT THOMAS, Design Director, Obama Presidential Campaign 
"There are techniques in this book that can turn disorganized creative prima donnas into organized creative prima donnas. It's full of terrific lessons in how to keep great ideas alive." -CHUCK PORTER, Co-chairman, Crispin Porter + Bogusky

About this edition

• Publisher: Portfolio
• Publication date: 2010
• ISBN 10: 159184312X
• ISBN 13: 9781591843122
• Binding: Hardcover
• Edition number: 1
• Number of pages: 256