Sarah Lacy asks an excellent question in her recent Tech Crunch post, Is Execution More Important Than Vision? She walks us through a couple fun “pioneers have arrows in their backs” stories where pioneers like Napster didn’t see the rewards of the iTunes who came after the trail was blazed. She concludes that Silicon Valley is a place where, with some exceptional exceptions like Twitter, execution trumps vision.
Three cheers for Sarah, because execution does trump just about everything. But vision isn’t an either/or thing. True, vision is sometimes an insight into a completely new idea or new market. But mostly, and more importantly, vision is where you want to take your company and what you believe in. It’s the fuel for
the execution engine. If you can’t see where you want to go, if you don’t know who you are, you will just drive your bus around in circles.
So, is execution more important than vision? Vision is necessary, but not sufficient. Think big, then be great at execution.
