Starting a company with a Great Idea might be a Bad Idea. Few of the visionary companies began life with a great idea. In fact, some began life without any specific idea, and a few even began with outright failures. Furthermore, regardless of the founding concept, the visionary companies were significantly less likely to have had early entrepreneurial success than the comparison companies in our study. Like the tortoise and the hare, visionary companies often get off to a slow start, but win the long race.
Visionary companies require great and charismatic visionary leaders.
Like the founders of the United States at the Constitutional Convention, they concentrated more on designing enduring institutions than on being great individual leaders. The most successful companies exist first and foremost to maximize profits. Maximizing shareholder wealth has not been the dominant driving force or primary objective through the history of the visionary companies. They have pursued a cluster of objectives, of which making money is only one - and not necessarily the primary one. Yet, paradoxically, we found that the visionary companies make more money than the more purely profit-driven comparison companies.