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In his famous essay “The
Hedgehog and the Fox,” Isaiah Berlin divided the
world into hedgehogs and foxes, based upon an ancient
Greek parable: “The fox knows many things, but the
hedgehog knows one big thing.”2
What does all this talk about hedgehogs
and foxes have to do with good to great? Everything.
Those who built the good-to-great companies
were, to one degree or another, hedgehogs. They used their
hedgehog nature to drive toward what we came to call a Hedgehog
Concept for their companies. Those who led the comparison
companies tended to be foxes, never gaining the clarifying
advantage of a Hedgehog Concept, being instead scattered,
diffused, and inconsistent.
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