It’s pretty incredible what happens when you see your project through the long lens: It opens up your thinking, puts strategies into perspective and provides clarity around your vision.
Sadly a lot of companies these days take primarily a short-term view on what they do — public companies are run quarter by quarter and startup founders often put themselves into the same hamster wheel. What these companies and their founders miss out on is generally the ability to do something which really moves the needle. Breakthroughs often come from thinking long-term combined with an iterative creation process.
And don’t take my word for it — Jeff Bezos puts long-term gain over short-term profit and turned Amazon into one of the most successful companies on the planet. Richard Branson developed a long-term vision for Virgin which allows him to conquer countless markets and geographies. Every single entrepreneur I met at Unreasonable at Sea and the Unreasonable Institute has a long-term vision which is bold, audacious and will transform lives. And I have no doubt that they will do exactly this.
What is your long-term vision? Where do you want to be in 10 years? 20 years? How does this change what you’re doing today?
As the computer visionary Alan Kay said in the early 70’s:
Don’t worry about what anybody else is going to do… The best way to predict the future is to invent it. Really smart people with reasonable funding can do just about anything that doesn’t violate too many of Newton’s Laws!
P.S. Please excuse the irregular schedule — I’m at Unreasonable at Sea at the moment. :)