The Creator

Organizations are founded by visionary Creators. The Creator develops or embodies an idea that is too great to be accomplished by a single individual, necessitating the formation of an organization to bring it to fruition. The energy and passion that the Creator has for the idea attract others, stimulating them to follow the Creator in his or her entrepreneurial venture. Behind this idea, the entrepreneurial Creator is usually driven by a quest for immortality — seeking to make a contribution that will not be readily eroded by the sands of time. In his book on CEO retirement, The Hero’s Farewell,1 Yale University’s Jeffrey Sonnenfeld identified the concept of heroic mission as an internal feeling that one (the leader or hero) has a unique role to fill and that only the hero is capable of carrying out the responsibilities of the job. This concept is captured by the nineteenth-century social reformer John Ruskin, in his statement “Really great men have a curious feeling that the greatness is not in them but through them.” This feeling that their existence should make a difference to the world in which they live is the strongest common characteristic among successful Creators. It is, however, also the characteristic that ultimately leads to the failure of many of the organizations they create, as the Creator fails to let the organization progress into the next stage of its lifecycle.