The Visionary Entrepreneur, the Business Manager and the Journey of an Idea towards an Organization

There is often a confusion about ‘Visionary or Entrepreneur’ vs. a ‘Business Manager’. Which one is better. Here is a construct presenting their differences in the context of describing the journey of transformation of an idea into an organization.

The VISIONARY ENTREPRENEUR is someone who envisions and imagines a future possibility, a trend, an idea, a gap area or a business opportunity. This envisioning is not day dreaming or creative imagination. It is a result of a mixture of experience, understanding, data and intuition.

A BUSINESS MANAGER on the other hand is someone who is data driven. He/she analyses the data to arrive at the trend and decisions. 

The visionary or entrepreneur connects several dots to create a picture. . The business manager breaks apart a problem to reach the root cause and find a solution.

A visionary entrepreneur starts from one end but is expected to take the business IDEA to the other end where it becomes an ‘ORGANIZATION’ managed by Business Managers for profitability, predictability and efficiency.

The TRAJECTORY of the movement of the idea is dotted or sketchy in the beginning but becomes more, well defined as the idea assumes a more definite and a tangible shape of an organization. 

One of the key risks for the idea and its driver (either the visionary or the manager’) is about the idea falling into the POND of ego and lack of reason. At times visionaries may take too much of liberty and avoid hard questions and dream uncontrollably. Or the manager may become too comfortable in his status or assumptions. Or the ‘my way vs. highway’ attitude creeps into teamwork. For a variety of reasons, the intuition or gut or feeling gets more importance than critical analysis and the idea falls into the ‘pond of ego and lack of reason’.

Once the idea is held carefully by the entrepreneur’s creativity, action & luck, it progresses towards becoming an organization. But this trajectory has two further distractions or diversions. One leads to DEAD END because of wrong assumptions or strategy (e.g. investment into an obsolete technology).

While another leads to losses due to POLTICS & ORGANIZATIONAL INEFFICIENCY.

While the risks and reasons of downfall are equally applicable to all, a visionary is more susceptible to pond of ego and the business manager is more exposed to the risks of ‘dead end strategy’ or ‘organizational inefficiency’.