An EnVisionary is first of all a successful visionary. She or he has been known by friends and colleagues as a person who constantly generates new ideas. She or he loves the creative process of brainstorming and enjoys the complex and chaotic process of generating new ideas. For the rest of this description, I will refer to the EnVisionary as "she", although envisionariness seems to be just as common a trait in men as in women.

The successful visionary has learned that a vision or a great idea is not enough. She possesses various skills that have allowed her to push her ideas through to reality on at least several occasions. She recognizes the obstacles to the development of new ideas that most organizations inadvertently create and enjoys the challenge of overcoming these.

Our Envisionary, in addition to having recognized and promoted several good ideas, has developed a process for incubating, screening, and nurturing ideas to full development. The focus here is on the process more than the act of developing a few ideas. In our experience, many successful visionaries have developed such a process but have never thought of it in those terms.

The Envisionary is also an outward-focused visionary. Many visionaries create methods and tools for improving the efficiency and effectiveness of their organizations' activities and they should be praised and promoted. However, the EnVisionary's scope of interest goes far beyond her organization. Her curiosity has led her to be recognized in her field as an innovator and a leader. She has dozens of intellectual interests which she pursues simultaneously.

So an Envisionary is a successful, process-oriented visionary with excellent leadership skills. She also has desire to delight and amaze her customers, whoever those may be. This desire along with her innate curiosity has led her to understand the needs of her customers to a degree that stands out in her organization.

Like all successful visionaries, she has learned to persevere and she has honed her team building skills, learning how to enlist supporters for her ideas from across the organization. She relies almost entirely on her ability to persuade and sell her ideas rather than organization / position power, even if she has those.

Envisions is looking for a few EnVisionaries like the one described above, but who also ideally meet the following additional criteria:

• she has some existing technology that could be commercialized into a software product. Obviously much of the innovation in the world has nothing to do with technology. However, in many organizations, because they could not find the tool elsewhere, EnVisionaries have developed tools themselves that help the organization's processes or provide direct value to customers.
• often, these tools are undocumented and not up to commercial quality standards. That is not a criticism, but rather an acknowledgement of the conditions under which the tools were developed. An EnVisionary, by definition, will not wait around until the industry develops some tool she needs. Impatience is a "virtue" often found in EnVisionaries!
• she has dozens of ideas for improving processes or enhancing her customers' experiences. An EnVisionary generates many more ideas than she can possibly pursue. But she also has developed a process for prioritizing the ideas. She has a dozen or so on the "front burner". Some of these ideas could grow into commercial software products.
• she works in an organization which, possibly through her inputs over the years, understands the value of developing new ideas. She and the organization understand partnerships and are good team players. Although Envisions is prepared to fund some product development, our ideal EnVisionary partner will have an organization that has the financial resources to support the development of a new product.
• she works in an organization that understands the importance of staying focused on its core business and understands its base of knowledge. While Envisions is delighted to help a customer develop their own software division or subsidiary, we encourage customers to be careful to not dilute the focus on their core business.
• finally, but not the least important, she understands her industry well. She probably is called upon within her organization to attend industry functions and represent her organization there. She knows the "thought leaders" in her industry and may be one herself. She has successfully organized unofficial joint ventures among industry members to pursue one of her ideas or participated in such a venture.

The fact that Envisions is focused on ideas and tools that could turn into commercial software products does not mean that we don't appreciate other innovative ideas. We are commercial software experts, so naturally that is our focus.

If you, as an Envisionary, bring the idea and the market / industry knowledge, then we have a powerful combination between us that could result in a successful new software product. Let's talk!