Who, or what, is a ‘visionary’?
Visionaries have an exceptional ability to assess where they find themselves, the way they live in the world, and can formulate a plan to get where they want humanity to be, because above all, visionaries understand the responsibility we all have to improve our world. As part of our mission, Novamir seeks to identify visionaries, from the past and the present, living or dead, famous or unheard of.
Never have the inhabitants of the planet Earth been in such dire need of vision.
We name a few individuals who we believe are visionaries, and describe some of their accomplishments. We will be adding to the list as time permits. But is there a common set of characteristics that a ‘visionary’ possesses? A visionary possesses unusually keen foresight. But what does that mean?
First, a visionary is usually a person, very rarely a company or other group entity; visionaries are sometimes seen as impractical dreamers, and tend to be squelched in group environments.
This person will have an unusual, unique blend of imagination paired with aptitude, and a firm idea of how and where the world should be. Many of us are dreamers, or have good ideas; the visionary, however, has the idea plus the aptitude to achieve the vision, or at least explain it so that others may develop the idea in the future.
Another characteristic of the visionary is that he or she will tend to be very observant, and will have a keen understanding of humankind’s past. The visionary knows that our past is an extremely useful indicator of future trends and events. Many of us wish to see a better world; visionaries tend to be able to see not only where we should go, but see where we have been; this 20/20 hindsight is what greatly aids the visionary’s predictive abilities.
Visionaries often can move humankind forward in a great leap – either by entertaining unconventional approaches to problems that have resisted conventional solutions, or by creating or understanding something never before even contemplated.
The visionaries we include all have an exceptional ability to assess where they find themselves, the way they live in it, and can formulate a plan to get where they want humanity to be, because above all, visionaries understand the responsibility we all have to improve our world.
Visionaries
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