This paper uses the metaphor of lighting candles to describe the process of institution building. To illustrate this, it drawn upon the actions of a prolific institution builder like Dr. Vikram Sarabhai in order to distil lessons about the impact of leadership actions on institution building. Through picking up an exceptional personality it attempts to demystify leadership actions surrounding the creation and development of institutions to distil learnings for less exceptional people involved in the task of institution building in various walks of life. It reports empirical data from tow institutions, namely. Ahmedabad Textile Industry's Research Association (ATIRA) and Physical Research Laboratory (PRL) which were founded by Dr. Vikram Sarabhai in 1947. It develops a model of leadership impact on institution building based on five concepts, namely, primacy/centrality of an individual as the core value; dominant leadership strategies of networking or creation of interacting/overlapping clusters, trusting and caring; and multiple leadership roles vis-à-vis the external environment, the internal environment and the interface between the institution and its external environment. It concludes with suggestions for the use of the model for both theoretical and practical purposes.