The Next Nvidia Will Start Without a Vision
How Successful Businesses Become Visionary Companies
In the late 2000s, many organisations introduced Agile methodologies: Daily stand-up meetings, backlogs, sprints and much more. Inspired by how some super-innovative companies worked, the belief was that the company and its people would become as innovative —if they could follow the method in a “proper” way.
Then, a post world war II phenomenon from isolated pacific islands showed why this was the wrong focus. It's know as a Cargo Cult, and refers to islanders building bamboo airplanes and control towers, while mimicking the operations of military airfield ground personell.
Having received gifts and formed connections with soldiers during the war, they had started mimicking their actions, hoping it would bring these benefits back. That copying observed practices would give a desired outcome.
The islanders were just human. Cargo cults are everywhere. Agile methodologies became the bamboo airplane supposed to summon the company back to its younger, faster and more innovative self. It didn't fly. The companies that succeeded changed their technology, their organisation and their culture — they went far deeper than superficially copying observed behaviours.
Today I'd like to discuss another popular methodology: Defining vision / mission statements with the belief they will turn you into a visionary company.
Strategy will take you a long way
When companies first succeed, it's because of the right strategy and execution. They use a good market understanding to create a product customers want, grow revenue, hire the right people, and keep the company alive and thriving. This is an achievement in and of itself: Building any kind of business is hard. Very few make it. All hands.
Many also have vision / mission statements used for communication, in sales, marketing, recruitment, fundraising and so on. They can be used to reach short-term goals, but it’s important to understand that these statements don't in and of themselves make you visionary. Moreover, when it becomes a trend to communicate like this, when “everybody” has a vision, it becomes diluted.
What concerns me more is the incentive to jump to conclusions: The moment you embark on an exercise to “define the vision”, you cannot come back without an answer. If would be like stating out loud you have neither direction nor purpose. Hence, you have to return with clarity, conviction and commitment. The exercise becomes a negotiation over words (“can everybody agree to this?”), not a thoughtful dialog about who we are, what we aspire to and what next steps we should take to go in the right direction. Similarly to the feature factories of “agile” organisations, the vision / mission workshops are about outputs, not outcomes.
The result will at best do no harm, at worst it will limit your ability to communicate who you are and where you're going.
Vision: An emerging force
Peter Senge, a foundational thinker in modern leadership, describes vision as an emerging force. As a researcher at MIT, he studied systems dynamics: How complex systems, like human organizations, evolve over time based on feedback loops and interdependencies.
In his research he had seen a pattern: Many companies had clear goals, but their actions were still misaligned, leading to stagnation or even failure. The problem was a disconnect between leadership’s strategy and the thinking, understanding and aspirations of their employees.
Senge showed that organizations function more as living systems than structured processes and hierarchies (even when they present themselves as structured hierarchies). A Vision only works when it’s internalized by people at all levels, shaping their decisions and behaviours. It's not imposed, but co-created. It evolves with the people as they collectively gain new insights, through daily work and interactions.
From his book The Fifth Discipline (2006):
“A shared vision is not an idea. It is not even an important idea, such as freedom. It is, rather, a force in people’s hearts, a force of impressive power.
It may be inspired by an idea, but once it goes further — if it is compelling enough to acquire the support of more than one person — then it is no longer an abstraction. People begin to see it as if it exists. (…) When people truly share a vision they are connected, bound together by a common aspiration.
One of the most counterintuitive aspects of vision is that leaders don’t have full control over it. They can shape it and cultivate the right environment for it to emerge, but unlike ideologies (and methodologies) they cannot simply declare it into existence.
Nvidia —A Vision 30 years in the making
When Rama Akkiraju, VP of Enterprise AI & Automation at Nvidia, took the stage at her 2024 TED Talk in Vienna, she was asked how many in the audience might be using Nvidia technology. She didn’t hesitate:
“You are all using Nvidia.”
Today, Nvidia is shaping the future of AI but that’s not at all how they started. The company was founded in 1993 with a focus on graphics chips for gaming — a successful strategy that took them all they way to an IPO, but not yet a grand vision.
Their breakthrough came when researchers outside the gaming industry started repurposing Nvidia’s GPUs for AI and deep learning. Nvidia embraced the shift, collaborated with the researchers and adapted their technology. Among many other things it played a pivotal role in the development of vaccines used to end the COVID-19 pandemic (There’s a fair chance we would still be in lockdown if not for the breakthroughs in protein sequencing and vaccine development, ultimately enabled by high-performance GPUs.)
By absorbing new impulses rather than confining themselves to an already successful mission, something much grander came into being (and yes, even after DeepSeek, they're still doing great). Their secret sauce was openness to new ideas, ability to learn, and a relentless drive to eliminate the complacency of past success.
It’s cool to be inspired by what big companies say — like grand statements about making the world a better place — just remember they often convey their famous statements after they have created visionary things. Steve Jobs infamous quote, “Put a dent in the universe” was formulated 10 years into the journey of Apple (Playboy Magazine, 1985). He had grand ideas all along, but he was able to pick, refine and implement the right ideas because he also was open to see how things evolved. He resisted the urge to define too much too early. It gave him and Apple repeated strategic success.
Show, don’t tell
When a company allows its vision emerge, they build several strategic advantages that are impossible to copy:
Connection — People feel connected to something bigger than themselves. They don’t just work for a paycheck; they work because they believe in something. This is the playground where people perform to the best of their abilities.
Optionality — Openness attracts the right kind of people, customers and partnerships. Serendipity plays a major role in visionary companies, and this is becoming an increasingly important asset in an increasingly unpredictable world.
Cultural Strength — A vision that emerges through dialogue and shared experiences creates a culture that is authentic, self-correcting and self-sustaining. Such culture also empowers and holds people more accountable to all outcomes of their work, including misuse of the innovation or technology they create.
With vision comes responsibility. You have to own it, not just from stage, but in how you think and how you act. In visionary companies, people are collectively willing to take this responsibility. To do the things that are harder, more challenging, and have fewer short-term rewards.
Start by having conversations, not exercises or workshops. Ask your people:
What do they care about? What excites them?
What do they see as possible?
What's a step in the right direction, that they could make right away?
Encourage everyone to have such conversations. Create an environment where people feel empowered to play, experiment and think big, but also take responsibility for improving what's around them, on an everyday basis. For building things that work.
Vision isn’t something you manufacture. By resisting the urge to lock things down too soon, you leave room for real aspirations to take root — not just at the leadership level, but across the entire organisation. Show the world who you are, through what you create.
In the meantime, focus on your customers: How you make their life easier and better in a way they are willing to pay for. Be proud of the business you’re building.
Thx, Jonas Feiring + everyone at Iterate Norway — past, current and future.