The title of this blog post is actually the favorite saying of serial entrepreneur, Steve Adams (thanks, Steve), and one of his heroes, Thomas Edison .
A great vision is the table stakes for building a valuable business. A great vision:
- Is clear, concise, and understandable to a broad constituency
- Is inspiring and motivational to those that are trying to execute on it, or buy into it (e.g.: customers, partners, consumers, etc.)
- Expresses the most universal core values (ex: GoogleGOOGL +0.22%’s “Don’t be evil”) and aspirations (ex: Jim Collins’ “Big hairy audacious goal” or BHAG) of the contemplated business (Ford’s “Democratizing the automobile”)
But to move from hallucination to reality requires hard-nosed execution.
From Vision to Reality 