Recently had a chance to read the new book Making Ideas Happen, by Scott Belsky, the founder of the Behance Network, an online collective of creative professionals. There are some interesting parallels to Glimmer (there are even a few Glimmerati designers featured in the book). But the book takes a unique and important position on the subject of creativity by focusing exclusively on what happens after we come up with ideas.

 

Belsky’s central point is that thinking up clever ideas is the easy and fun part: The hard work is in turning those ideas into realities. I have maintained, in Glimmer and on this site, that designers tend to be particularly adept at turning ideas into realities because the design process encourages you to give form to ideas immediately, via sketching, prototyping, etc. And once you give form to an idea, you take it out of your imagination and begin to make it real.

 

Belsky addresses this point in his book—he looks at how IDEO, for example, starts building and prototyping ideas immediately—but he offers a much more expansive and, in some ways, more practical take on this whole notion of making your ideas real.

 

He argues that there are three key things that creative people must do in order to bring their ideas to life:

-       Become more organized, in terms of work habits and processes.

-       Engage a community of people around your ideas, to give the ideas more support and momentum.

-       Use leadership skills to manage others—and, especially, yourself—through the difficult challenge of bringing an idea to completion and fruition.

 

Belsky’s advice on getting organized is, I think, the strongest part of the book. He acknowledges that most creative types have a built-in resistance to organizational processes because, well, it’s just not all that creative. We’d much rather be dreaming up the next idea—which is why so many ideas never get past the dreaming stage and into the “doing” stage.

 

The book offers lots of practical tips on how to get yourself to take concrete action on your ideas. Belsky advises that every idea you’re serious about should be treated as a work project. And to keep that project constantly moving forward, you must constantly be thinking about—and writing down—the next “Action Steps” to be taken.

 

Sounds simple and maybe even obvious, but it’s profound stuff. And it’s something that many of the most successful creative people do, on a daily basis. For example, Belsky shows us how Bob Greenberg—the head of the R/GA interactive design marketing firm, and one of the Glimmerati—handwrites his own Action Steps every day, using a specific set of colored markers and always organizing his list in exactly the same way. Greenberg does it this way because this visual design works for him—and Belsky points out that this is all part of finding ways to get yourself to focus on the sometimes mundane tasks that are critical to getting things done.

 

The book’s section on building a community around ideas also makes some important points—arguing that in doing this, you create opportunities to gather feedback and refine ideas, as you tap into the wisdom of crowds. Being connected to a community that has an interest or a stake in your idea will also encourage (pressure) you to get the idea done—and the community can then help you promote it, once it is completed. I was less taken with the book’s third section, on “leadership,” which seemed a little fuzzy to me and perhaps not as widely applicable as the other two sections.

 

But overall, this is a book that Glimmer fans will tend to find useful and inspirational. The two books share a common viewpoint: Both are suggesting that innovation is more important than ever, and that there are certain processes and working models we can look to as we try to get better at bringing new ideas and possibilities into the world.