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

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,

? how Richard Branson had the insight to trademark Virgin Galactic in the early 1990s, when private spaceflight was science fiction
? how Richard Feynman made breakthroughs in quantum mechanics by pretending he was an electron
? 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.

Genres: Nonfiction, Business

256 pages, Hardcover

First published March 1, 2011

Reviews

[Chrystal · Rating 2 out of 5]

Got this free from Goodreads. It's an advanced copy. Pretty good. Some parts were really good and some were really boring.

[Vicki · Rating 4 out of 5]

Erik Calonius has done us all the service of interviewing an array of incredibly successful business people,analyzing the lives and choices of key visionaries among us, then comparing his findings to the latest research in brain function. The results are surprising. The folks he has observed: Steve Jobs (Apple), Richard Branson (Virgin Galactic Airways), Walt Disney, Edwin Catmull (the guy who developed the Pixar movie concept), and many others, have developed a pattern to the way they think, moving from one idea to the next level, imagining what the next step might be in a particular pattern, envisioning what has not yet occurred and then working to make it happen.

Calonius delves into the way neuroscience has discovered that the brain works, and it also is very dependent on patterns. Most of us can't recall a long list of numbers, but have memorized countless series...phone numbers, social security numbers, etc., by breaking the numbers into manageable groups. Our brains look for patterns to help us to remember things we have studied or witnessed. We probably think more like those visionaries than we give ourselves credit for...we just stop before we start envisioning what might come next.

Calonius looks at the impact that various elements of vision have had on the successes these business leaders have experienced. He has chapters dedicated to Intuition, Courage and Luck, among others, and then ends with a most interesting chapter, "Can You Learn Vision?"

We may not all be geniuses...well, I may be, but I can't speak for the rest of you...but the truth is, we can all be more observant, more analytical and practice possibility thinking, as we ponder what might come next in a series. Remember when phones had cords, when one computer filled a room? Somebody believed there were future possibilities and worked to make them happen. Think about the tools you use, the methods you follow to get your work done. How could it possibly be more efficient?

I do think we can all get better at this! Calonius has written a very readable treatise about some incredibly interesting folks who truly walked ten steps ahead of the rest of us, and then convinced us that their's was the path to follow toward a better future. Check it out...you'll be glad you did.

[Rena]

Looks good.

[Carma Spence · Rating 5 out of 5]

You can read my review of the book here: http://nyjournalofbooks.com/review/te...

[Terri Alpert · Rating 3 out of 5]

A competent repurposing of existing material, both the author's and that of others. Well summarized but nothing particularly original.