When I was approached about reviewing a copy of Scott Belsky’s book, Making Ideas Happen, I was very excited and couldn’t wait for the two of us here to have that opportunity, but when I was also invited to speak with Scott (founder of Behance and the 99%) that excitement level tripled. Here is a transcript of what transpired over my half hour discussion with Scott. He shared some insight into the creation process of the book as well as the content of the book itself.

ADM: Scott first I want to say thank you for taking the time to sit with me and discuss your upcoming book, Making Ideas Happen, which hits shelves on April 15th. I received a preview copy of your book and wanted to talk to you about it and maybe get a little insight about it from you. How long was this book in the making, obviously you took a lot of time to gather the information and materials for this?

SB: It’s been quite a journey, let me tell you, there are parts of this book that I remember writing or concepts that I observed, that I remember writing 9 years ago. But I have really been focused on this book since a little before behance was founded which was about 5 years ago. My passion has been to interview the most productive, creative individuals and teams on the planet. Anyone that I could get a hold of and ask them, not about their ideas but about their execution. Usually these famous people, famous designers, everyone always asks them “how did you come up with your ideas?” “what inspired you?” I never ask those questions im only focused on the execution side.

ADM: After finishing the book and I know where you are coming from. I start generating a ton of ideas and can only concentrate on one or two and the others ideas fall to the wayside and it is very frustrating. When you set out to write this book, and now that it’s actually happening, what do you hope the response will be to this book? What do you hope it will accomplish?

SB: My dream is that I start talking to people who have read this book and they are starting to focus more energy on the stuff that is really not sexy. When I speak the conferences and when I speak with other creative professionals across industries there is so much discussion about brainstorming and inspiration and all these little things and no one spends time talking about the execution part of it. So if the book were to accomplish one thing I would want it to prompt more discussion about things like how do you manage projects? How do you manage people? How do you stay organized amidst the creative chaos that governs our lives? These are the things that you just don’t hear people talking about at a lot of these creative conferences and discussions within creative teams.

ADM: Definitely. I work in-house right now and whenever we have our brainstorming sessions we throw out a ton of ideas, but how many of them actually come to fruition?

SB: Right and when you’re talking about in-house about projects you maybe often are talking about new ideas, but how often do you sit back with your colleagues and say let’s talk about how we execute, let’s talk about how we structure meetings, and manage our time. Those are the discussions these teams need to have more often.

ADM: Of course and ever since I finished the book, I’ve been looking at our own process and seeing how we might be able to utilize some of these ideas. Even for me I’m looking at how I can incorporate these steps into my process little by little, and not trying to overhaul my process all at once.

SB: Which is really how it’s intended. That’s exactly how it’s intended. Everyone has to have their own process and that process needs to be organic in order for it to be effective. I actually say that in the book. I really mean it. You’ve seen in the book how I talk about for example attraction breeds loyalty in process and organicity is so important especially for the creative mind. When you create something…it’s almost like cooking. If I were to make a pasta dish for you you might enjoy it, but if you were to join me in making the pasta and cranking it out and then making the tomato sauce, it’s going to taste so much better. You’ve experienced it and you’re more likely to finish your plate. It’s the same exact concept. For someone to adopt a system that someone else prescribes, I personally think is a mistake because you’re going to miss out on the component that makes us loyal over time.

ADM: Right, while going through this I’ve tried to read and re-read sections instead of blowing right through it and really try to absorb some of the things you’re trying to say. Starting off, some of it seemed vague at first just because everyone does have their own process so you can’t really be very very specific when you’re writing this book. I was confused at first but as I started to read and re-read certain sections I began to understand and absorb some of the ideas as far as incorporating these methods and ideas. Have you done a lot of speaking about the book as far as speaking at large conferences or small groups about it? I just want to see what kind of reaction you’ve been getting.

SB: Ive been speaking about the content behind the book, really about execution, organization, and leadership in the creative world for years. Ive been speaking at design conferences, at different agencies, design firms, and I typically get a lot of different reactions. There are people who will say to me, sometimes they will be creative directors who will say to me “listen, organization is someone else’s job, my job is to throw out ideas and someone else has to capture it. I also, more often than not, heard who express deep frustration at with so many ideas that are half-baked and have never seen the light of day. They expect the better idea to happen more easily and that’s one of the biggest myths ‘the better the idea, the easier the execution,’ but there is obviously no correlation between the quality of the idea and the likelihood of the idea being executed properly. Which is probably why when we go into movies we’re left thinking “how did this even get made? Such a bad movie!” The proof is that there is absolutely no correlation between the two and I think a lot of people can identify with that. What I’m trying to do is spark more discussion on that other 99%. There are so many books, magazines, and websites all about inspiring creativity. I just think there needs to be more focus on the other side. The conundrum is that the other side, that other 99%, is a deeply personal part of people’s process, when you have to find your own way of holding yourself accountable to your ideas. Nothing I say in the book is going to give you the answer, but it’s going to make the argument that you have to, that so many other people have done it and you’re just going to have to pick and choose.

ADM: Agreed, everyone does have their own process that is deeply personal to them, that they have spent years and years working on. Planning how they would like to schedule their time with different projects and how they function moving to and from different parts of the day which require their time and energy. One of the things in the book that you discuss that intrigues me was when you talk about how the initial ideation process is so appealing, energetic and sexy, but then you reach that plateau where you start questioning “Is this going anywhere?”, “What am I doing?” and you just have to work through that. Did you have that same situation when you were writing this book?

SB: Absolutely. I can’t even describe to you how weird it was to write a book about making ideas happen, when the book itself, for years, was a bold idea I was also trying to make happen. It was also like an MC Escher puzzle. Where you are looking at the puzzle and the puzzle is within the puzzle inside the puzzle. Honestly it was just so strange and I was encountering the obstacles that I was writing about. I ran into the obstacle around the stigma of self-marketing and how awkward it is to go out there and to promote your work in a community of creative talent that you respect and I’m dealing with that right now. Naturally, I’m not a person that is constantly blasting everyone. I encountered ran into the obstacle of new ideas getting in the way of me finishing certain ideas. I’d get on one path and I’d get distracted by something new and shiny on another path and having to hold myself accountable to finishing concepts and sections and doing enough diligence on them to make them concrete. I suffered from the challenges of gathering feedback from my community on the idea. It was such a bold and personal idea that I was working on that sometimes I found it difficult to solicit feedback from others and to get them to give me honest feedback and to really take it and soak it in. So it’s so interesting to almost live my own case study, but it helped me develop the content, it helped that my own experience writing the book served as a litmus test for a lot of the content, whether I agreed with it in practice because I was forced to test it.

ADM: That’s interesting because as I’m reading through I’m thinking and applying these concepts to my own process, but I can’t begin to try to put myself in your shoes where you’re writing about it as well as going through it all at the same time. So I’m guessing as you are “testing” these ideas, there is a lot of writing and re-writing as your ideas evolve and change. Re-touching a little bit on the ideation process that you avoid talking about in too much depth, do you think that because the ideation process gets so much coverage and press, you see it in books, magazines, on websites, everywhere, that it leads to people thinking “I have to come up with tons and tons of great ideas” and that they feel that every single one of them will magically happen without consideration of the execution process. Are we getting that idea from the media? Or is it an innate characteristic?

SB: I think that it’s part of our essence. It’s this gift we have to see thing differently and to constantly think of what we’re seeing in terms of what the application is for what we’re doing. New ideas, I talk in the book about how it’s almost like a drug that intoxicates us. It’s this great thing but is also very dangerous tendency that gets in the way of execution. We often talk about what we’re infatuated with and that’s one of the reasons why there is so much subject design on ideation. People like to talk about where inspiration comes from. One of the things I talk about in the book is this notion of acting without conviction, which I found really interesting. A lot of the teams that I was meeting with just pursue ideas almost without thinking through the implication because they figure most ideas are fleeting anyway, if we’re really excited about this then let’s just jump on this, let’s do a small test or a rapid iteration of something associated with the idea and one of a few things will happen. Either it will fall flat on its face and we’ll realize really quickly that it was a bad idea and we’ll learn from the experience, which isn’t a bad outcome. Or we’ll act quickly and we’ll realize that there’s traction, we’ll know that we should allocate resources and energy to the idea, which is a great realization because we’ll be investing in something that is proven rather than something that is just in the ether, but most importantly, if we act on it it’s more likely to gain momentum because if we just think about it, knowing how we are, we’ll just come up with another idea and another idea, and the other idea that we never acted on will be lost. I found that very interesting. Before going into this whole process I always viewed the creative mind inherently as perfectionist; wanting to always have their work look perfect and I found quite the opposite when I was interviewing some of the most productive individuals and teams out there.

ADM: The idea of rapid iteration comes up a lot at work. We come up with some fantastic ideas and the energy is really high and we jump on it, pushing other projects to the side for a minute. So I completely understood that concept and idea of acting without conviction. I’ve wanted to bring this book up in our marketing meetings and hope that we can incorporate at least some of these ideas in our process to help us become more efficient in how we organize our ideas.

SB: That’s one of the things that I would like to end on. I hope people just take a few things away from the book that change the way they approach their creative work. I really don’t think people should overhaul a process that needs to be organic in order to be successful. My hope is that, and I say this also when I speak with groups of people, that there are a few things, whether it’s measuring the outcome of meetings in a new way or the approach that you have on managing your partnerships on creative projects or the way you view competition or solicit feedback, if each person can take away three or four things that they do differently on how the execute their ideas, to me that’s successful and all I’m really hoping to achieve because I think those few things can make all the difference and more ideas will see the light of day. I also think its a more approachable way to look at the book, “what are the things I can actually adapt in my everyday?”

ADM: Again Scott, I really appreciate you taking the time to speak with me about this and I think it’s a great book and I think it will be invaluable to creative teams and individuals.