Ten Steps Ahead - 9781591843764

Visionaries like Steve Jobs and Richard Branson are the stuff of legend. Yet we still fumble in describing what they do. Drawing on recent insights from neuroscience and psychology, Ten Steps Ahead reveals what makes visionaries tick, and how they develop their extraordinary powers. We learn, for instance:

-How Steve Jobs used intuition to guide him from the Apple I to the Mac, and on to the iPhone and iPad.

-How Richard Branson had the insight to trademark "Virgin Galactic Airways" in the early 1990s, when private spaceflight was still science fiction.

-Why Richard Feynman made breakthroughs in quantum mechanics by imagining he was an electron.

-How a block of wood and a chopstick helped Jeff Hawkins create the first PalmPilot.

-Why John Lennon took a nap before writing "In My Life."

These stories, and many more, are told by journalist Erik Calonius, who has interviewed some of the greatest living business visionaries. In this elegantly written book, he weaves together their stories, highlights their shared attributes, and draws on recent insights into psychology and brain science to help us understand what sets them apart.

More specifically, Calonius explains how intuition works, both for and against us. How luck distributes itself and how visionaries make their own luck. Why courage is not merely voluntary. And how the brain lets us see things in our heads from various perspectives, so that we can disassemble and reassemble the pieces into something new and valuable.

Calonius argues that thinking "ten steps ahead" is anything but an inborn talent. It's the sum of an array of carefully cultivated skills that any business leader can develop over time.