Bringing Big Ideas to Fruitation

Most ideas never happen. Fleeting moments of brilliance are neglected in favor of mundane and seemingly necessary obligations. Just think what might be if you had followed through on just one or two of your great ideas…

“Just one great idea can revolutionize your life.”

-Earl Nightengale

Photo by Armosa Studios

Scott Belsky, CEO of Behance and author of Making Ideas Happen, has built a life and an empire around a system of living that melds creativity and organization to create an impactful product, service, or methodology.

He suggests that four different elements contribute to an idea becoming fully realized:

1. Creativity
2. Organization and successful execution
3. Communal forces and teamwork
4. Leadership capability

To begin, Scott advise everyone to react to your inflow of ideas, rather than proactively work to develop new concepts. Creativity is all around us and does not need to be forced.

In this day and age, we're continually inundated by external stimuli – phones and emails, social media, and opportunities for instant gratification, and that's on top of our most basic needs and obligations. One way to remedy this is to build windows of non-stimulation into your day.

It's also important to exert energy into becoming organized, and to train yourself to focus on things that are of long-term importance to you instead of everyday distractions.

Take a do-it-yourself approach to organization. Organize with a bias towards action and structure

your life and days in the way that best matches your values; create a system that will help you do do high-quality work with the greatest efficiency.

Creativity x Organization = Impact

As many before him, Scott believes that the best place to find success lies within the overlap of your genuine interests, skills, and opportunities. However, he goes beyond that, addressing the future of creative work. The new era of workers, often referred to as free radicals, seek intrinsic rewards for their work, are willing to share ideas liberally, demand certain freedoms, try often and thus fail often, and expect to be fully utilized and constantly optimized in their workplace. To discover your tribe and be applauded for your way of thinking is an important key to creative progress that it is often overlooked. (Check out Belsky's wonderful article for more on the topic of free radicals: A Manifesto For Free Radicals: Less Paperwork, Less Waiting, More Action.)

In order to for an idea to come to life, one needs leadership skills. Thankfully, taking charge, leading others, and executing plans takes all different forms. You no longer need to be loud to be the leader of a group, but instead you must simply have conviction and presence.

Many of Scott Belsky's ideas resonate deeply with my own, though my thoughts lack the cohesion and brevity so eloquently captured by Belsky. He was a fast-talker at the conference, so I wasn't able to digest everything until rereading my notes later, but I quickly realized that he's articulated many aspects of my own personal philosophy, as well as defined how I fit into the modern work space and creative landscape. Though he received my sincere applause while on stage, I owe him my standing ovation right now.

Nothing extraordinary is ever achieved though ordinary means. Thinking differently is not only okay, it's a form of creative innovation and the future of success in business and human relations.