Throughout history, great inventors started their quest with a singular vision of creating something unique, expressive, and rewarding for others. Their ability to preview in their minds what they want to create is so vivid that it becomes a powerful gravitational force in their lives. So, when they encounter challenges, their vision keeps them moving forward and motivates them to find innovative solutions to obstacles in their path. 
Jimmy Wales is a modern-day example of an inventor with a great capacity to preview and envision the future. He is a good role model for all performers about the innovative power of creating a strong mental picture of what you want to create that is unique and different.According to Time Magazine, “Wales, 39, is a former options trader who in 1999 set out to reinvent the encyclopedia for the Internet age—free, up-to-date and available to all. He started the way most encyclopedists start, by commissioning articles from experts and subjecting them to peer review. After 18 months, he had a pitiful 12 entries; at that rate, it would take a few millenniums to equal Encyclopedia Britannica. So, Wales created a free-form companion site based on a little know software program called a wiki (the Hawaiian term means quick) that makes it easy—with the ‘edit this page’ button—to enter and track changes to Web pages.”“The effect was explosive. That simple button turned readers into contributors and contributors into evangelists. Wikipedia now has more than a million articles in English, nearly 10 times as many as in Britannica. That number nearly doubles each year. And most extraordinarily, the site has not been defaced by vandals or hijacked by zealots. Or more precisely, it is vandalized every day but is usually repaired within minutes by any one of the millions of users who are motivated to protect and nurture the site.”“Today Wales is celebrated as a champion of Internet-enabled egalitarianism. He describes himself not as anti-elitist but as ‘anti-credentialist.’ That’s a key distinction. It means that amateurs can have as much to contribute as professionals and that talent can be found anywhere. Everyone predicted that mob rule would lead to chaos. Instead, it has lead to what may prove to be the most powerful industrial model of the 21st century: peer production. Wikipedia is proof that it works, and Jimmy Wales is its prophet.”Like Wales, performers in any field need to thoroughly preview in their minds the performance or accomplishment they want to create. However, true creativity relies on a three-step process that, on the surface, seems simple but is difficult for some people to implement. Step one of the process requires you to vividly imagine a future achievement or invention. This mental picture becomes your compass that always points North to your desired future accomplishment. Step two requires you to take concrete actions to travel North to your goal. However, along the way, you will encounter obstacles that get you lost.For Wales, the obstacle was that the traditional way of developing content for an encyclopedia was too slow for his online version. So he had to quickly move to step three of the creative process that required him to innovate in order to stay on course by opening up the content development to a world-wide community of professional and amateur experts who could add ideas anytime, anywhere. This ability to innovate in the face of challenges is a major step of the creative process and defines great inventors from “everyone else who has an idea that goes nowhere.” Do you have an idea for something you want to create for yourself or others? Is so, answer the following questions to determine if you have a strong mental image of what you want to create and can innovate in the face of challenges: By answering these questions, you can improve how you preview the future, take concrete steps toward your goals, and innovate in the face of challenges in order to become a highly creative and talented performer.
