3 Vision
3.1 Introduction
For entrepreneurial people, it is important to anticipate the future. Someone who sees an opportunity to create value and then takes the initiative to realise that value, is generally taking a gamble. The future will show whether the enterprise or project will indeed meet a need, and whether circumstances will be favourable or unfavourable to him or her. Uncertainty is inherent in entrepreneurship [see: Coping with ambiguity, uncertainty and risk]. However, as an entrepreneurial person you can immerse yourself in current trends and developments in order to form an image of the future. By developing a vision of the future you can place your entrepreneurial initiative in a wider range of developments and you can anticipate both favourable and unfavourable developments. A venture is never isolated from its environment, and the developments therein. Moreover: by means of an inspiring vision of the future, you can motivate, inspire and bind other stakeholders (think of employees, team members, investors).
3.2 Insights
In 1992, Bill Gartner and his co-authors described entrepreneurial behaviour as 'acting-as-if', by which they meant: acting as if something will exist, which does not yet exist (see box Further reading [1]). Because the entrepreneur creates something new - a new organization, a new product or new service - the entrepreneur lives in the future, as it were: he or she brings something that so far exists as a future possibility, into the present. At first, the entrepreneurial project exists only in the entrepreneur's mind: an image of what the future project will look like, its place in the world, and the path to get there. The entrepreneur gets to work with this image: she or he takes the initiative and convinces others to join in.
Benfits of forward thinking
Because the entrepreneur brings the future to the present, it is important that the entrepreneur has an image of the future. This requires awareness of trends and developments. A well-known classification for such developments is PESTEL (there are many variants): political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological and legal developments [2]. By being aware of trends and developments, the entrepreneur reduces the chance of betting on the wrong horse. The year 1900, just before the mass production and sale of cars, was not a good time to start investing extensively in a horse rental company; the year 1980, just before the rise of the PC, was not a good year to make in-depth investments in typewriters. However, it is not just about avoiding mistakes, but much more importantly, about seeing what is going to be possible, what the implications of current trends and developments are.
Delving into the future is not only important for orienting yourself towards new ideas for products or services, but also for reviewing your current entrepreneurial activities. An important distinction that is made in the literature is that between exploitation and exploration [3]. Exploitation means using current opportunities and getting results from them. Exploration means investigating trends and developments towards the future, and how they provide opportunities for your business. An enterprising person should not only focus on the current exploitation, but also on exploration, to be successful in the long run. The term ambidextrous is used in this context. Just as good footballers are often two-legged (think of Cruijff, Sneijder, Van Basten), entrepreneurial people are able to focus both on exploitation (utilizing, optimizing) and on exploration (exploring, researching).
Besides avoiding wrong initiatives and renewing your current activities, a vision of the future is also important to motivate and inspire others. In the beginning there is nothing but your idea. If you want stakeholders to work with you (in a team of owners), work for you (as an employee), provide you with capital, deliver to you, or otherwise contribute to the success of your initiative, it is important that you can communicate a compelling vision. This is especially true if your ambition is to grow your venture significantly [4].
What are the advantages of being able to think anticipatively, with a view to the future? First of all you broaden your view of what is going on [5]. Not only do you start to understand and fathom developments better, you can also start to make connections between them. How do different trends interact? Soon you will discover that things can go in different directions, and something that some foresighted people do is think in scenarios. Scenarios are images of the future that differ from each other. Sometimes they can be good and bad scenarios, but they don't have to be. Scenarios can differ depending on whether you attach more or less weight to a particular development. By thinking in terms of possibilities, you avoid pinning yourself down to one single vision of the future. At the same time, you may find that a certain scenario is more likely than others, or you may have a clear idea about what the future needs, and be able to adapt this idea in different scenarios. Anticipatory thinking thus helps you not only to broaden your understanding of the future, but also to get a grip on the future: you develop a vision of what is the place of you and your company in that future, and what action you can proactively take to reach that place [5]. By connecting your image of the future with your current desires and strengths, you can come up with ideas that are relevant to you and that have a future [see: Spotting opportunities].
Limitations of future-oriented thinking
Of course, you also have to be aware of limitations to predicting the future. One hundred percent accuracy will be rare. There are countless events that will occur with a very small chance, but which will have a huge impact, and some of them will probably happen. The COVID-19 pandemic is one example. In addition, we do not know all the possibilities that the future will bring. As Nassim Taleb states [6]: in order for a medievalist to predict the twentieth century, she must be familiar with elements of that future, such as electricity, the Internet and the atomic bomb. In addition, we are unable to assess the probability of the possibilities that we do know. Another psychological issue is that, when predicting the future, we tend to place too much value on what everyone is talking about now. All in all, we quickly create an image of the future that is rather causal (if this happens, then that), while in reality everything interacts, and an image of the future may starts to lead a life of its own (for example, in the 1980s the prevailing image of the future was that unemployment would remain high forever and that the nuclear bomb would likely fall).
However, these disadvantages do not mean that you should not look to the future. Often successful entrepreneurs are in the right place at the right time. However, more people were in the right place at the right time, but some of them had a vision of the future that made them better able to make use of the favourable timing (the role of luck should not be underestimated either [7]). In addition: many trends are already known to have an impact. For example: the ageing of the population will drastically change every market, just like the trend towards digitalisation, including the application of artificial intelligence.
Entrepreneurship in the future
Entrepreneurship itself is also changing under the influence of the PESTEL developments. In a recent study among the members of the editorial boards of the scientific journals Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, the researchers asked the professors on these boards to predict what entrepreneurship would look like in 2030 [8]. Although the professors thought that entrepreneurship would essentially not change (formulated in this study as recognizing, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities to solve problems), they identified numerous changes in why, where, how, and by whom entrepreneurship will be done in 2030. Of course, the panel proved to be strongly divided on all predictions: even experts seem to have all kinds of different visions of the future.
Benfits of forward thinking
Because the entrepreneur brings the future to the present, it is important that the entrepreneur has an image of the future. This requires awareness of trends and developments. A well-known classification for such developments is PESTEL (there are many variants): political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological and legal developments [2]. By being aware of trends and developments, the entrepreneur reduces the chance of betting on the wrong horse. The year 1900, just before the mass production and sale of cars, was not a good time to start investing extensively in a horse rental company; the year 1980, just before the rise of the PC, was not a good year to make in-depth investments in typewriters. However, it is not just about avoiding mistakes, but much more importantly, about seeing what is going to be possible, what the implications of current trends and developments are.
Delving into the future is not only important for orienting yourself towards new ideas for products or services, but also for reviewing your current entrepreneurial activities. An important distinction that is made in the literature is that between exploitation and exploration [3]. Exploitation means using current opportunities and getting results from them. Exploration means investigating trends and developments towards the future, and how they provide opportunities for your business. An enterprising person should not only focus on the current exploitation, but also on exploration, to be successful in the long run. The term ambidextrous is used in this context. Just as good footballers are often two-legged (think of Cruijff, Sneijder, Van Basten), entrepreneurial people are able to focus both on exploitation (utilizing, optimizing) and on exploration (exploring, researching).
Besides avoiding wrong initiatives and renewing your current activities, a vision of the future is also important to motivate and inspire others. In the beginning there is nothing but your idea. If you want stakeholders to work with you (in a team of owners), work for you (as an employee), provide you with capital, deliver to you, or otherwise contribute to the success of your initiative, it is important that you can communicate a compelling vision. This is especially true if your ambition is to grow your venture significantly [4].
What are the advantages of being able to think anticipatively, with a view to the future? First of all you broaden your view of what is going on [5]. Not only do you start to understand and fathom developments better, you can also start to make connections between them. How do different trends interact? Soon you will discover that things can go in different directions, and something that some foresighted people do is think in scenarios. Scenarios are images of the future that differ from each other. Sometimes they can be good and bad scenarios, but they don't have to be. Scenarios can differ depending on whether you attach more or less weight to a particular development. By thinking in terms of possibilities, you avoid pinning yourself down to one single vision of the future. At the same time, you may find that a certain scenario is more likely than others, or you may have a clear idea about what the future needs, and be able to adapt this idea in different scenarios. Anticipatory thinking thus helps you not only to broaden your understanding of the future, but also to get a grip on the future: you develop a vision of what is the place of you and your company in that future, and what action you can proactively take to reach that place [5]. By connecting your image of the future with your current desires and strengths, you can come up with ideas that are relevant to you and that have a future [see: Spotting opportunities].
Limitations of future-oriented thinking
Of course, you also have to be aware of limitations to predicting the future. One hundred percent accuracy will be rare. There are countless events that will occur with a very small chance, but which will have a huge impact, and some of them will probably happen. The COVID-19 pandemic is one example. In addition, we do not know all the possibilities that the future will bring. As Nassim Taleb states [6]: in order for a medievalist to predict the twentieth century, she must be familiar with elements of that future, such as electricity, the Internet and the atomic bomb. In addition, we are unable to assess the probability of the possibilities that we do know. Another psychological issue is that, when predicting the future, we tend to place too much value on what everyone is talking about now. All in all, we quickly create an image of the future that is rather causal (if this happens, then that), while in reality everything interacts, and an image of the future may starts to lead a life of its own (for example, in the 1980s the prevailing image of the future was that unemployment would remain high forever and that the nuclear bomb would likely fall).
However, these disadvantages do not mean that you should not look to the future. Often successful entrepreneurs are in the right place at the right time. However, more people were in the right place at the right time, but some of them had a vision of the future that made them better able to make use of the favourable timing (the role of luck should not be underestimated either [7]). In addition: many trends are already known to have an impact. For example: the ageing of the population will drastically change every market, just like the trend towards digitalisation, including the application of artificial intelligence.
Entrepreneurship in the future
Entrepreneurship itself is also changing under the influence of the PESTEL developments. In a recent study among the members of the editorial boards of the scientific journals Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, the researchers asked the professors on these boards to predict what entrepreneurship would look like in 2030 [8]. Although the professors thought that entrepreneurship would essentially not change (formulated in this study as recognizing, evaluating, and exploiting opportunities to solve problems), they identified numerous changes in why, where, how, and by whom entrepreneurship will be done in 2030. Of course, the panel proved to be strongly divided on all predictions: even experts seem to have all kinds of different visions of the future.
3.3 Future reading
[1] Classic article describing entrepreneurship as bringing the future to the now. Gartner, W.B., Bird, B.J., & Starr, J.A. (1992). Acting as if: Differentiating entrepreneurial from organizational behavior. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, 16(3), 13-32.
[2] See, for example, https://www.business-to-you.com/scanning-the-environment-pestel-analysis.
[3] This classic article argues that for long-term success, organizations must not only exploit current opportunities, but also explore future possibilities. March, J.G. (1991). Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization Science, 2, 71-87.
[4] This well-designed research shows the importance of vision for business growth. Baum, J.R., Locke, E.A., & Kirkpatrick, S. (1998). A longitudinal study of the relation of vision and vision communication to venture growth in entrepreneurial firms. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 43-54.
[5] Educational Science, European study on teaching forward-looking thinking. Levrini, O., Tasquier, G., Barelli, E., Laherto, A., Palmgren, E., Branchetti, L., & Wilson, C. (2021). Recognition and operationalization of Future-Scaffolding Skills: Results from an empirical study of a teaching-learning module on climate change and futures thinking. Science Education, 1-28.
[6] Now famous book about the human inability to cope with the improbable or unexpected. Taleb, N.N. (2007). The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable. Vol. 2. New York: Random House.
[7] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-role-of-luck-in-life-success-is-far-greater-than-we-realized.
[8] This study among 214 members of the editorial boards of Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice indicates that the "what", the essence of entrepreneurship will not change, but predicts many changes in the "who", "why", "where", and "how". Van Gelderen, M.W., Wiklund, J., & McMullen, J.M. (2021). Entrepreneurship in in the future: A Delphi study of ETP and JBV editorial board members. Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 45(5), 1239-1275. https://doi.org/10.1177/10422587211010503. (open access)
[2] See, for example, https://www.business-to-you.com/scanning-the-environment-pestel-analysis.
[3] This classic article argues that for long-term success, organizations must not only exploit current opportunities, but also explore future possibilities. March, J.G. (1991). Exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organization Science, 2, 71-87.
[4] This well-designed research shows the importance of vision for business growth. Baum, J.R., Locke, E.A., & Kirkpatrick, S. (1998). A longitudinal study of the relation of vision and vision communication to venture growth in entrepreneurial firms. Journal of Applied Psychology, 83, 43-54.
[5] Educational Science, European study on teaching forward-looking thinking. Levrini, O., Tasquier, G., Barelli, E., Laherto, A., Palmgren, E., Branchetti, L., & Wilson, C. (2021). Recognition and operationalization of Future-Scaffolding Skills: Results from an empirical study of a teaching-learning module on climate change and futures thinking. Science Education, 1-28.
[6] Now famous book about the human inability to cope with the improbable or unexpected. Taleb, N.N. (2007). The black swan: The impact of the highly improbable. Vol. 2. New York: Random House.
[7] https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/beautiful-minds/the-role-of-luck-in-life-success-is-far-greater-than-we-realized.
[8] This study among 214 members of the editorial boards of Journal of Business Venturing and Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice indicates that the "what", the essence of entrepreneurship will not change, but predicts many changes in the "who", "why", "where", and "how". Van Gelderen, M.W., Wiklund, J., & McMullen, J.M. (2021). Entrepreneurship in in the future: A Delphi study of ETP and JBV editorial board members. Entrepreneurship Theory & Practice, 45(5), 1239-1275. https://doi.org/10.1177/10422587211010503. (open access)
3.4 Exercises for students
1) A typical day in 2030...
To get started with the future, you can start as a teacher with this simple (writing) assignment for students.
Imagine, it is winter in 2030. Where are you at that time? Write a few lines about it:
Complete the following sentences:
You can extend this assignment by asking students to design the environment in the game program Minecraft. See examples Science Subject Kit | Minecraft: Education Edition.
Explanation: This exercise is an 'appetizer' to explore with students the theme of the future in a very concrete way.
2) PESTLE
For almost every subject you can ask yourself what it will look like in the future, say in 15 years’ time. If you delve into this, you will see that a large number of factors can be at play. A PESTEL analysis helps to get an overview of all these factors. Give students the following assignment:
Designer babies are babies whose DNA has been altered or selected on the authority of the parents. This may be done to exclude certain diseases, for example, or to select certain characteristics, such as height, intelligence, or beauty. Your task is to investigate which factors will determine whether this selection process will actually be implemented in 15 years' time. Take into account political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological and legal aspects.
Clarification: Awareness of current trends and developments is a first step in forming an image of the future.
3) Scenarios
The previous exercise should lead to the discovery of a series of factors that will influence the application of designer baby techniques in 15 years' time. These factors will differ in terms of importance and uncertainty. A next step is to think in terms of scenarios: different visions of the future. Give students the following assignment:
Two factors from the previous exercise that are uncertain and have high impact are the following: 1) Will designer babies become something for the elite, or for everyone? 2) Will genetic techniques be used only to prevent disease, or to change all kinds of characteristics? Using these two factors, you can create a system of axes, with four quadrants in it (see figure).
To get started with the future, you can start as a teacher with this simple (writing) assignment for students.
Imagine, it is winter in 2030. Where are you at that time? Write a few lines about it:
- The place where you would like to live/be at that moment;
- what your life will be like;
- The problems that you have at that moment, that are going on in your environment or in general;
- the opportunities and new developments that are available;
- the technologies, the tools, the home and your environment in which you live;
- what your social life is like.
Complete the following sentences:
- My dream is to...
- My ideal city/village ...
- My ideal world has...
- My biggest worries and fears are...
You can extend this assignment by asking students to design the environment in the game program Minecraft. See examples Science Subject Kit | Minecraft: Education Edition.
Explanation: This exercise is an 'appetizer' to explore with students the theme of the future in a very concrete way.
2) PESTLE
For almost every subject you can ask yourself what it will look like in the future, say in 15 years’ time. If you delve into this, you will see that a large number of factors can be at play. A PESTEL analysis helps to get an overview of all these factors. Give students the following assignment:
Designer babies are babies whose DNA has been altered or selected on the authority of the parents. This may be done to exclude certain diseases, for example, or to select certain characteristics, such as height, intelligence, or beauty. Your task is to investigate which factors will determine whether this selection process will actually be implemented in 15 years' time. Take into account political, economic, socio-cultural, technological, ecological and legal aspects.
Clarification: Awareness of current trends and developments is a first step in forming an image of the future.
3) Scenarios
The previous exercise should lead to the discovery of a series of factors that will influence the application of designer baby techniques in 15 years' time. These factors will differ in terms of importance and uncertainty. A next step is to think in terms of scenarios: different visions of the future. Give students the following assignment:
Two factors from the previous exercise that are uncertain and have high impact are the following: 1) Will designer babies become something for the elite, or for everyone? 2) Will genetic techniques be used only to prevent disease, or to change all kinds of characteristics? Using these two factors, you can create a system of axes, with four quadrants in it (see figure).
Suppose you want to start a dating company for designer babies. How different would such a dating business look in different scenarios (the different quadrants)? Compare two opposite quadrants: 1 and 3, or 2 and 4.
Explanation: By thinking in scenarios, on the one hand you prevent tunnel vision (it forces you to think in multiple possibilities), and on the other hand you practice flexibility and creativity, because you anticipate different outcomes.
Explanation: By thinking in scenarios, on the one hand you prevent tunnel vision (it forces you to think in multiple possibilities), and on the other hand you practice flexibility and creativity, because you anticipate different outcomes.