Afternoon Keynote

 

The Journey In-Between: Making Ideas Happen

The beginning and the end of a creative project or new company get all the headlines and fanfare, but the magic happens in the less understood "journey in-between.” Great ideas only see the light of day when creative people and teams are able to get organized, harness the forces of community, and become better leaders of themselves and others. After years of research, Scott Belsky and his team at Behance have found a series of best practices common across some of the world's most productive creative people and teams. Scott Belsky breaks down a bold journey from start to finish, chronicling the essential insights of great leaders and teams during the four phases of every venture: Start, Endurance, Optimization, and Finish. Learn the counter-intuitive and often uncomfortable realizations needed to survive the roller-coaster of anonymity, team development, product iteration, and grit required to push ideas to fruition. Whether it is a bold new project, an entrepreneurial pursuit, or an effort to create a new initiative within a large organization, these insights help teams endure the journey and optimize along the way.

 

Scott is the author of the national bestselling book "Making Ideas Happen" (Penguin Books, April 2010) and leads Behance, the world's largest online platform of creative professionals. In 2012, Scott became Adobe's Vice President of Product/Community after Adobe's acquisition of Behance. In this session, Scott will share insights and practical tips that you can use to push bold creative projects to completion.

 

Scott Belsky is Adobe's Chief Product Officer and Executive VP of the Creative Cloud. Scott's primary focus is making Creative Cloud a creativity platform for all. As chief product officer and executive vice president, Creative Cloud, Scott leads product management and engineering for Creative Cloud products and services, Adobe Spark, and Behance, Adobe’s community of 10 million creatives. Scott also oversees Adobe’s Design team, which is responsible for experience design across all Adobe products.


Prior to joining Adobe in December 2017, Scott was a venture investor at Benchmark in San Francisco. This is Scott’s second tenure at Adobe. He originally joined the company after it acquired Behance in 2012. At that time, he led Adobe’s mobile strategy for Creative Cloud. Scott co-founded Behance in 2006 and served as its CEO for six years.
Scott is the author of Making Ideas Happen: Overcoming the Obstacles Between Vision and Reality(2010) and The Messy Middle: Finding Your Way Through the Hardest and Most Crucial Part of Any Bold Venture(2018).

 

Scott has been an advisor on design and product management for leading companies and organizations, including Adidas, Pentagram, Pinterest, Proctor & Gamble, Facebook, and the United States Government. In 2010, Fast Company included Scott on its list of "100 Most Creative People in Business."

 

Here are two of Scott’s recent talks to give you an idea of what he’ll cover at Summit ‘18.

How to Endure the Middle of the Creative Process

https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=7&v=O0uIMf5XZ44

 

The First Mile of a Product

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-3-CBunSeIo

 

A huge thank you to our keynote sponsor, Antenna for helping to make this possible