Ten Steps Ahead: What Separates Successful Business Visionaries from the Rest of Us Hardcover - 2011

by Erik Calonius

How do the most extraordinary entrepreneurs create a bold vision for the future-and follow through against all setbacks?

Visionaries like Steve Jobs and Thomas Edison are the stuff of legend. Yet we still fumble in describing what they actually do. Drawing on recent insights from neuroscience about the roles that intuition, emotional intelligence, and courage can play, Ten Steps Ahead reveals what makes visionaries tick and how they develop and use their extraordinary powers. We learn, for instance,

á how Richard Branson had the insight to trademark Virgin Galactic in the early 1990s, when private spaceflight was science fiction
á how Richard Feynman made breakthroughs in quantum mechanics by pretending he was an electron
á why Jeff Hawkins walked around with a block of wood and a chopstick to help design the first Palm Pilot

Erik Calonius, who has interviewed many of the greatest living visionaries across disciplines and industries, weaves together their stories, highlights their shared attributes, and draws on science to help us understand what sets them apart and shows how we too can see (and make) the future. It's not that some people can magically see opportunities-it's that the rest of us are blind to the ones around us.