Making Ideas Happen

Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality

By: Scott Belsky

Narrated by: Don Hagen

Length: 7 hrs and 3 mins

Publisher's summary

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

Critic reviews

"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)

It takes the GTD approach to a whole other level

I really found this book helpful in creative problem solving and learning about the self-defeating "goal setting" practices that I had been using. It definitely has some approaches that you can start adopting right away without throwing whatever systems you have now out the window. Highly recommend. I read it awhile ago and am already thinking about reading it again.

Loved the concepts, Hated the reading.

Would you listen to Making Ideas Happen again? Why?

The book is well written and the ides are easy to understand. Unfortunately, I've heard Mr. Hagen read fiction before and I think he does a much better job of that. It's a little easy to get lost when he's reading a business book and I kept having to rewind and listen to sections over again.

A must read for any creative professional!

I really liked Scott's advice on creative leadership, how to approach challenges and how to transform ideas into action. My biggest takeaway was that we should focus on making the idea happen and avoid allowing an influx of other ideas to distract or stagger your progress. There is lots that this book covers. I enjoyed it! The only thing I think would've been nice is to have scott narrate his own book with his own voice. I'm sure the passion would've shone through.

Current, Informative and Inspirational

I found the topics discussed and strategies very informative and inspirational. Nice blend of examples and action steps to applying these principles in your own life. Effective both professionally and personally - work-life balance.

Too many ideas...

The basic premises of the book is good: what is required to make ideas happen. This is not simple, as it requires both internal discipline, processes and organisation. The problem is in the logic or better, lack of it. There are just many things that are needed for making ideas happen. So this book ends up with an endless list of things to be doing, considering etc. This doesn't aid in easy listening, how valuable each lesson might be.

Nowadays there seem to be many books like this, such as 'Rework'. If the book is actually not more (or less) than a collection of lessons, it is better to have it in writing than on Audible. In this way, it is an easy reference.

Overall, the content is not bad, although a bit too much.

Little new here

Ok. Not about being creative. About how to follow through on ideas to get them implemented. The first section is on how to be organized (tips and strategies), the rest is on collaboration and leadership. Although theres nothing new to hear, it might be helpful to those who need help getting organized. And for me, the stories about famous business people are always entertaining and helpful.

More About Running a Business

This book is more about running a business so ideas can happen, rather than making ideas happen. There is a wide range of topics, including organization, supply chain, prioritization, leadership, and managing a creative team.

I love this book

Great voice and narration, I had read the book already though but I enjoyed it

This could be one of my to go books.

Highly recommend for those who are looking to get themselves to the next level of productivity.

Great book

it was very helpfull, its a good self assessment tool. He more suggest new points of view on things you probably are doing if you’re reading the book. It was a welcomed new perspective