Seeing David in the Stone

For the last twenty years, we have searched for answers to three timeless questions: How did some people find and seize the great opportunities of their times? What can we learn from them to help us find and seize great opportunities? How did great leaders help others (and organizations) to find and seize great opportunities? In this search, we studied the lives the works, the writings of, and the past research on many successful people, including Michelangelo Buonarroti, Winston Churchill, Marie Curie, Thomas Edison, Albert Einstein, Dwight D. Eisenhower, Galileo Galilei, Bill Gates, Abraham Lincoln, Fred Smith, Leonardo da Vinci, Sam Walton, Oprah Winfrey, and Frank Lloyd Wright. We discovered that these and other great innovators and achievers all took the same actions to find and seize the great opportunities of their times. It was these actions -- rather than heredity, traits, intelligence, environment, or work habits -- that made them more successful than others.