The Myth of the Visionary Is Killing Entrepreneurship

May 10, 2013

Do you need to be a visionary to be a successful entrepreneur?


We’re all familiar with the notion of the entrepreneur as visionary. It’s one that Hollywood loves to perpetuate — misunderstood geniuses and sudden epiphanies always make for a good story. But according to Brant Cooper and Patrick Vlaskovits, co-authors of the New York Times bestseller The Lean Entrepreneur, believing in the myth of the visionary as an overnight success can be a dangerous thing for aspiring entrepreneurs. In fact, it can severely limit their potential.

It’s easy to think that visionaries were born with brilliant business ideas flowing through their veins. Not only is this not true, of course, it also encourages potential entrepreneurs to either hold their ideas in too high regard or abandon them prematurely altogether.
In this short video, Cooper and Vlaskovits explain the pitfalls of each scenario, and reveal the truth of how legendary “visionaries” really came to be.

Do you think all entrepreneurs have to be visionary in order to truly succeed?

For more insights from Brant and Patrick, watch all the videos in the Lean Entrepreneur series:
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Founders

Brant and Patrick are both bestselling authors of The Lean Entrepreneur. Brant travels the globe speaking with entrepreneurs about how to discover and create new value; about empowering individuals to make the change they want to see in the world. Patrick is the CEO and cofounder of Superpowered, a cross-platform (Android & iOS), low latency, pro audio SDK with a simple API, designed to solve performance and power consumption challenges of low-power mobile devices and wearables.