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)

Great book. Great plan. Needs more Belsky.

The content however CANNOT be matched. If you are a creative who cares about realizing your ideas, this book is a must have. Totally a great plan.

I agree with the others. This book would be more successful if another voice talent did it. Mr. Hagen is more of a fiction reader and, unfortunately, did not capture the energy Mr. Belsky created in his tome. Wish Scott would have read it himself. Could have been a more valuable listen to me.

One of the best books I have read in a long time

This book not only makes you understand that ideas are common among the creativee but it gives you a process to get you to move forward. You no longer do you have to feel that your ideas will never go anywhere. Here is your blueprint to getting things really done.

The voice on this did not bother me at all

I have read the reviews on this title, and I must say that I disagree to the critic voices of the reader. I found the performance of the reader 100%. I have listened to many, many audiobooks, and I very rarely get disturbed by the reader of the content. Getting absorbed in the content is so much more interesting than trying to find faults with the readers performance. This book is great! The quality of the audio and the performance of the reader is as good as one expect from Audible. Perfect.

Misleading

This book wasn’t for you, but who do you think might enjoy it more?

Anyone who wants to learn about different ways of making todo lists

What could Scott Belsky have done to make this a more enjoyable book for you?

I don't know where to begin. All i heard after 3 hours was managing a todo list. It would have been acceptable to me if he talked about todo lists for half an hour. But it just goes on and on. There's gotta be more to making visions come to reality than managing a todo list.

What do you think the narrator could have done better?

I don't have any issue with the narrator

What reaction did this book spark in you? Anger, sadness, disappointment?

Just felt like I wasted a precious audible credit :(

Any additional comments?

take it from me folks, keep a todo list, and your vision will come to reality. Now listen to something else :)

The ultimate blueprint for all creative people

This book is a must read for anyone that has good ideas and struggles to take action to make them happen. The book is very well researched I cannot emphasize this enough. It gives you plenty of insight into the lives of creative leaders who can follow through and how they motivate themselves to make their ideas a reality.

You are guaranteed to understand in plain terms why so far you have been unable to execute your ideas and what to do about it in more ways than one. The author gives you the ultimate blueprint you need to focus, stay motivated and realize your ideas. I have to agree that the narration is a bit monotonous but don't let that hinder you from getting this book, the content is brilliant!

Well Read

I read a number of reviews complaining about the quality of the narration. It kept me from purchasing this book for a while but finally gave in.
I found the narration a perfect speed and tone and easy to listen to. I don't know where the negative comments have come from unless it's been re-recorded and re-posted.
This book is full of very useful information from start to finish. I highly recommend it.

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.

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.

Productivity and project management for creatives!

If you're a right-brained creative who struggles with productivity and project management, then you'll really get a lot out of this book!

Scott Belsky does not really break new ground with any of the concepts in this book, but he does put the popular ideas and techniques into strategies and techniques that work for creatives and creative teams.

Scott really identifies with the struggles that artists, designers, writers, etc. face with getting things done. He takes the concepts that you may have already heard about or learned from David Allen's "Getting Things Done" and makes them really work for this type of industry mindset.

I got so much out of the audiobook that I went out and purchased the physical book as well to use as a quick reference and reminder, which I refer to frequently when I start to feel overwhelmed. The "Action Method" introduced in the book is applicable not only in how I organize my projects and tasks, but also in how I organize my files and other resources.

Where David Allen's GTD leaves the productivity management concepts relatively broad, Scott Belsky fine tunes and sharpens those concepts for creative professionals in a very effective way!

No Woodchoppers here!

I can understand why people didn't like the reader but it wasn't a problem for me. The reading style actually made the concepts easy to absorb. I think some people might've been looking for a motivational speaker and didn't get one.

The ideas presented are really just logical things that you might be able to come up with yourself, if you could only see the wood for the trees. That is where I think this book succeeds. It doesn't really say anything new but reminds you to step outside the moment of creative inspiration and incorporate other strategies into your long term creative process to keep you motivated and moving forward. To continue the earlier metaphore, it gives you a nice aerial view of the forest. We need that forest, it lends oxygen to our creativity.

If you're looking for a pep talk this won't do it but if you're looking for something that will push you to look beyond the solitary creative individual to become a creative person that exists within a wider context of community etc then this will open your eyes to that.

Fine

The book covers some basic topics that can be of help but there are better, more succinct audiobooks out there.
The book is a relatively easy listen and there were some things I took from it, but certainly didn’t have the wow factor.

Good book but poorly read

Dreadful narrator with monotone voice and endless downward reflection. Sends me to sleep! Interesting content though.

Great book but the narration was distracting

Absolutely love the book. Want to listen to it all again and take better notes. However, the narration was robotic and really distracting.

Text needed to help achieve

Would have been better with a text version as well to allow you to follow the do this now stages.

Over all pretty good and well displayed message needed a little more enthusiasm from the speaker.