Commit. It' s one thing to dream up briginal ideas. But designers quickly take those ideas beyond imagination by giving form to them. Whether it's a napkin sketch or a digital mock-up, the quick and rough models that designers constantly create are a critical componer of innovation-because when you give form to an idea you begin to make it real.

It's true that when you put an idea into the world while it's still young and imperfect, you increase the possibility of short term failure, but designers tend to be much more comfortable with this risk than most of us. They know that innovation often involves a repeated process with setbacks along the way and those small failures are actually useful because they show the designers what works and what needs fixing. The designers' ability to"fail forward" is a particularly valuable quality in times of dynamic change. Today, many companies find themselves operating in a test-and-learn business environment, which is just one more reason to pay attention to the people who've been conducting their work this way all along.