Visionary Leadership and Entrepreneurial Vision Within Entrepreneurship

Abstract

This study investigates how entrepreneurs and visionary leaders formulate a vision, how they think about vision, how visions arise and what should constitute a sound vision. The literature emphasizes the importance of visions or visioning as a core component of entrepreneurship, leadership, and strategy, and it showed a strong link between vision(ing) and innovation. The literature also suggests that there are several attributes of visions, as well as many vision types that may potentially segment the entrepreneurs’ visions. A qualitative approach was used for this study and interviews were carried out with experienced entrepreneurs. The study found that entrepreneurs generally have visions regarding their business ventures and opportunities. Most visions are structured, even though there are certain instances where visions are unstructured and spontaneous. Entrepreneurs regard the visioning process as crucial for their success and the consensus among the entrepreneurs interviewed is that visioning as a core competency can be developed.