Donald Morris

Are there practical implications to gaining a firmer understanding of what constitutes an opportunity? Author Donald Morris believes there are and convincingly demonstrates his belief in the context of what he calls high-end opportunities—those rare but critically important and time-bound occasions where what we choose to do or to become inexorably shapes and alters the future course of our lives. Reliably recognizing and effectively confronting such opportunities is an ability that can be honed and refined when we become aware of the disparate dimensions of opportunity and learn to view important problems by focusing in turn on each facet comprising an opportunity’s richness and potential.

We have all missed opportunities in our lives, yet despite this fact we are brashly confident that we know what opportunity looks like. The author challenges our uncritical confidence in this ability and supplies ample evidence showing how and why we are bound to miss opportunities. Understanding and recognizing our blind spots lays bare misconceptions and effectively arms us with the necessary perspective for recognizing opportunities. Questioning our commonsense views of opportunity leads to a comprehensive picture of opportunity allowing a clearer view and providing critical insights for confronting the landmark decisions that define our lives. A fuller understanding of opportunity, it is maintained, fortifies us with a keener ability to recognize and grasp the circumstances that constitute important opportunities. Through graphic examples and illustrations we are guided to a fuller appreciation of the nature of opportunity and to a deeper understanding of what makes some people better equipped to spot those opportunities that others blissfully pass by.

In excavating and exposing the defining characteristics of opportunity, I have synthesized insights from a range of sources including history, criminology, economics, anthropology, physics, literature, biology, business, psychology, poetry, law, sociology, religion, and philosophy. From this amalgamation emerges a picture of what constitutes opportunity.

Prometheus Books, 2006