Vision is a big word when your company is just an idea on the white board. In fact, I rarely use the word but instead ask the question 'What do you hope for your company and customers 10 years out?' What's so remarkable about this question is that it asks an entrepreneur to take a perspective on what the world will look like in the future. It also drives every decision thereafter.
Every entrepreneur comes to the game with a different set of experiences. Those set of experiences determine how they see an opportunity. In fact, two entrepreneurs coming from different experiences will more times than not see an opportunity differently.
Right out of business school (1999) I worked for a startup called Sylantro Systems which was started by a group of entrepreneurs from the Telecom space. Pete Bonee, the CEO, wanted to deliver hosted IP telecommunication services to businesses. Pete's vision came from his experiences delivering hosted voicemail solutions (Octel) and hosted conferencing solutions (Latitude) to service providers. He saw the world through a lens that was heavily carrier-centric. This ultimately led Sylantro down a path that required it to play in the carrier world. This also led Sylantro down the path of tying its success to service providers. Regardless of the outcome every entrepreneur comes to the table with a set of experiences that drive their truisms.
Vision does not come by sitting in a room
Because vision is about having a perspective it shouldn't be built sitting in a room. It should be built by triangulating as many inputs as possible. Looking at the current mega-trends (i.e. aging population), meeting with potential customers, scoping competitors and industry experts should all go into a vision's crafting.
Vision matters
In the end, vision has an enormous impact on the bottom-line. There is no more personal example for me than looking at the current outcomes of Yahoo! and Google. When I worked for Yahoo! in early 2000 Yahoo's vision had something to do with providing users with delightful web experiences. It's pathetic I can't remember the details and I bet you'd find very few who could in those days. In fact, I did a web search and couldn't find anything specific on the subject! However, almost every Yahoo! employee at the time knew Google's vision, "To organize the world's information and make it universally accessible and useful." The current numbers tell the rest of the story.
