Entrepreneurship and Innovation Education

2From Idea to Vision¹

A legendary hero is usually the founder of something – the founder of a new age, the founder of a new religion, the founder of a new city, the founder of a new way of life. In order to found something new, one has to leave the old and go on a quest of the seed idea, a germinal idea that will have the potential of bringing forth that new thing.

Joseph Campbell, Hero with a Thousand Faces

According to Louis Jacques Filion (1991), the entrepreneur is someone who imagines, develops and fulfills his or her visions. The vision is an idea, or a set of ideas and goals (images) that one wishes to achieve in the future. He presents three categories of visions: the emergent vision (primary), the central vision and the complementary vision (see Figure 2.1).

The emergent visions result from ideas about products and/or services imagined by the entrepreneur before he or she starts a new venture. At this stage, the entrepreneur has but a very foggy image of what the final enterprise features will be. He or she is usually “inspired” by a sudden insight as to what the product should be like, what makes it unique and which market needs it is supposed to fulfill, not knowing yet whether the idea is economically feasible or where to find the financial resources to develop it.

Figure 2.1. Progression from emergent to central to complementary visions (based on Filion 1991). ...