April 2000

November 2002

Innovation Tips

…for thriving on collaborative innovation

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The Hedgehog or the Fox

“The fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing.” So wrote the ancient Greek poet Archilochus.

The hedgehog knows one defense: to curl into a compact, prickly ball, a strategy that consistently defeats the cunning fox, which has many stratagems. The hedgehog is simple; the fox is complicated. The hedgehog does one thing and does it exceptionally well. The fox does many things, craftily.

Noting the approach of the hedgehog versus the fox, Isaiah Berlin wrote, “For there exists a great chasm between those, on one side, who relate everything to a single central vision…a single, universal, organizing principle…and, on the other side, those who pursue many ends, often unrelated and even contradictory.”

Which is better, to be a hedgehog or a fox? The truth is that organizations, like individuals, have been successful as both. Yet, as Jim Collins has noted in his recent book, Good to Great, the hedgehog companies are those that most consistently attain unusual success. They each find their one fundamental mission in the world and address that mission over and over again—like a hedgehog.

Their “Hedgehog Concept,” as he calls it, refers to that one essential contribution the organization can offer better than any other. For a company like Walgreens, it is simply this: customer convenience. The Hedgehog Concept at Abbot Laboratories is to develop products that reduce the cost of health care.

The Hedgehog Concept does not just fall out of the sky; rather, it is usually the outcome of much rumination and soul-searching. Dialogue about a proposed Hedgehog Concept must survive the scrutiny of three types of questions:

1. Passion. Does it elicit passion for the work? Is it worth working hard to attain? Will people be genuinely enthusiastic about it?

2. Competence. Does it build on core competencies? What can that organization do better than any other? Is it consistent with the organization’s experience of extraordinary or unexpected success?

3. Value. Does it deliver a sought-after value that can fuel the economic engines of the organization? Will people readily pay for the value delivered?

When all three of these perspectives are successfully addressed and everyone is working toward a simple and single-minded purpose, an organization has attained its Hedgehog Concept.

The Hedgehog . . . or the Fox? The hedgehog knows one strategy; the fox knows hundreds. Yet the Hedgehog frustrates the fox every time.

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