Greek Parable, “The Fox is clever and cunning know many things but, the hedgehog knows only one big thing”. Jim Collins in his book “Good to great” Published in 2001 mentioned it. He explained this as a hedgehog concept in his book and showed its benefits for businesses. So, let's see how the hedgehog concepts help businesses to develop from good to great.

Every business wants to be the best but they cannot be the best if he doesn’t know what he’s good at. So, Jim explains that being best isn't the goal but to understand what you’re best at and not best at, is. Knowing what you’re good at than your competitors, will make you great.

The basics of the Hedgehog concept is derived from the intersection of three questions as below

• What is your business passionate about?

Anyone or any organization that desires to travel from good to great needs passion. Know what your employees are passionate about. What is that’s important to all employees? What makes them enthusiastic and inspires them?

• What is your business best at?

Then secondly you need to know what your organization is best at. What’s make them different from others? What’s your distinguishing factor? You’ll have to concentrate on strength of your organization and not only on your competencies and weaknesses. It's ok for any organization to possess few weaknesses.

• What is your business drives the economic engine?

And as talking about the business you must know, what your organization's economic engine is? Means what you’re generating revenue from? Where is your profit coming from?

After knowing the answers to the three questions above, check where do these answers overlap, and the intersection will offer you the entire output. Working and specializing in the derived output you will achieve your goal to succeed and be the best. 

Growing Your business has two ways

Vertical Growth 

It means increasing your company share than current ones. This could be achieved by

• Improving the capabilities of your product. 

• Introducing and selling new products within the market.

Horizontal Growth

It means increasing your company in new areas likely geography vise, sector vise or markets. This could be achieved by

• Replicating and reusing your successful business models during a new market.

• Monetizing what you have already got i.e., leveraging your existing asset.

Conclusion

Fox may know various strategies to reach their goal and try to pursue various goals at once whereas, hedgehogs target what they know best and try to accomplish their goal. By knowing your passion, distinguishing factors, and economic engine, intersecting them, and then concentrating on its development you will be great at your organization’s current market. Afterward setting on vertical and horizontal growth, you can achieve greater success. Showing how the Hedgehog concept helps to achieve success within the long term.