“A fox knows many things, but a hedgehog knows one grand thing.” ( Archilochus)…
So it better (wiser) to focus and limit the scope of your work or should you try to diversify ?
Intellectual foxes and hedgehogs
A ‘Fox’ knows and uses many tricks, and so a fox’s knowledge of the world doesn’t pass through one unifying grand theme or behavioral pattern. The ‘Hedgehog’ on the other hand, does one thing really well, and relates everything they see to this grand idea and concept.
The actual behaviors of foxes and hedgehogs set aside, the metaphor is beautiful. The image by Archilochus on the Fox and Hedgehog was (relatively) popularized when the writer Isaiah Berlin expanded it and discussed it in detail. He even classified writers and thinkers into these categories, showing that some of them have a unifying idea or theme, while others don’t.
Berlin argues – for example – that Plato, Dostoevsky, Hegel, and Nietzsche are hedgehogs, viewing the world through the lens of a single idea, while Aristotle, Erasmus, Goethe, Pushkin, and Shakespeare are foxes who draw on a wide variety of ideas and experiences.
Focus in Marketing & Management : The Essence of Creativity and Brands
Focus : Your Future Depends on It (?) – Hedgehog – 1
I recalled this theme of the Fox and the Hedgehog as I was going through an old marketing book by Al Ries, Focus. The book is basically an argument against diversification, ‘product-line extensions’, and the follies of pursuing growth at any cost, and without regard to the underlying contexts.
The book contains many interesting examples on companies that have lost a lot of money because of their attempts to grow and diversify, venturing into new (for them) fields. I would question that a bit, and argue that the main reason these companies lost wasn’t the attempted diversification itself, but the lack of understanding of brand strengths and customer perceptions, in addition to CEO hubris and that incessant need people with power have to build empires.
Kodak, Nokia, GM, Ford, Chrysler, IBM, 3M, and many other examples feature in the book, in an interesting exploration of how focus (or the lack thereof) can impact corporate destinies. The main argument is that ‘brands are like a diamond’ and they need to be polished, not grown indefinitely. This is surely reasonable, and brands are stronger when they are clear and correspond to very specific perceptions in people’s minds.
This bit on Donald Trump was particularly humorous, and its ending takes me to my next point :
From the Book “Focus” By Al RiesNobody has extended the equity of the brand quite so far as Donald Trump. At first, The Donald was successful. Then he branched out and put his name on anything the banks would lend him money for. Three casinos, two hotels, two condominiums, an airline, a shopping center, a football team, even a bicycle race.
Fortune magazine called Trump “an investor with a keen eye for cash flow and asset values, a smart marketer, a cunning wheeler dealer.” Time and Newsweek magazines put him on their covers.
Today Trump is millions of dollars in debt. What made him successful in the short term is exactly what caused him to fail in the long term. Line extension.What The Donald did in the United States, The Richard is in the process of doing in the United Kingdom. Richard Branson is the owner of Virgin Group, whose Virgin Atlantic Airways has created a lot of excitement in the North Atlantic airline market. Not satisfied with just owning an airline, Branson is now line-extending the Virgin name.
In Praise of Foxes : Prediction and Innovation
To anyone with an intuitive understanding of brands, and how consumers understand and remember brands, Ries’ point should be clear. Clear, Simple, Sharp is the way to go. James Collins, another management thinker, reiterates these points. His book “Good to Great: Why Some Companies Make the Leap… and Others Don’t ” shows a clear preference towards hedgehog mentality arguing (tangentially and indirectly) that it is among the ingredients for long-term success.
Brands require clarity and simplicity and focus, management requires consistency, but there is a caveat..
The world is too complex to be understood, or to fit into one idea. Our mental capacities are quite limited. Circumstances will change sooner or later, and our readiness to deal with the shifting circumstances determined our fate, and depends on our mental flexibility. (I elaborate on these dimensions in a part of my book which explores Approximate Thinking “Fuzzy on the Dark Side” (FDS), titled “The Inevitable Incompleteness of Intelligence”).
The timeframe for considering something a success changes all the story. “Focus” mentions Kodak and Nokia as exemplary companies whose focus is promising, and IBM is advised to focus on computer hardware. In reality, Kodak’s inability to move away from the analog/chemical/photographic film frame was probably why it was doomed, and IBM would have perished hadn’t it moved its focus to services and software (I’m not sure how the Lotus acquisition would fit here).
Richard Branson was (questionably) able to take the Virgin brand to explore new markets, by staying focused on the essence of the brand, and not its particular product perceptions.
As for James Collins’ “Good to Great” a number of detailed analysis show that many of the companies he quoted were more likely to fail (underperform the market) on the long term [This is one example].
For the long term, the perspective is significantly different.
Longer (?) Term Survival favors the Fox
First I must qualify the word longer, itself somehow fuzzy. I’ve read research (the source eternally lost in ‘trust me’ obscurity now), showing that institutions surviving 100+ years are usually universities, and maybe pubs, restaurants, and hotels… nothing more. The ‘foxness’ of this group requiring serious scrutiny.
However, research by political scientist P.E. Tetlock seems to show that political analysts having a ‘fox mentality’ are more likely to create accurate forecasts. His book “Expert Political Judgement“, contains extensive and well documented research in this regard. Bestselling author and founder of fivethirtyeight.com (with a curious fox-resembling logo), Nate Silver, urges readers to be more ‘foxy’ in his “The Signal and the Noise“.
The Essence of Creativity and Innovation
From a design perspective, a creative designer should have a knowledge profile shaped like the letter ‘T’ (I believe it was Tim Brown, the former CEO of IDEO that said that, couldn’t verify now). They should know about many things, with a specific deep knowledge in one particular field.
Creative Thinking itself, is a process of moving knowledge, experiences, and ideas from one field into another. Metaphors and borrowing conceptualizations are among the key ingredients of a successful and creative brainstorming session. If you didn’t have enough fields, where will you borrow from?
Even if Brands need to be simple and sharp / clearly defined , I don’t see that as the dominant paradigm that should rule over organizational destinies. A more flexible and fluid mentality is essential for survival. Dealing with power, bureaucracy, and corporate waste becomes more pressing in ambiguous and fuzzy settings, but those are different problems to address.
Focus in Life & Personality traits
Are there specific personalities and personality traits that can be associated with Fox vs Hedgehog profiles? There is some discussion on that. Tetlock – in fact – provides a simplified test in his book.
This predisposition, to either see the world through a unifying lens, or as fragments and pieces, can have a drastic effect on many aspects of our education, work, and life.
So… How should you behave? What to do about this?
It definitely seems that there are advantages to focus: becoming memorable, accumulating experience, and developing specialized skills and competencies. The danger comes from the changing environment, and our own ability to judge which skills and experiences are the most important.
On the other hand, being adaptive and flexible, like a fox, might mean that someone is more likely to respond better to the changing environment, and will have a higher survival rate on the long-run. On the short-run though, in ‘current’ conditions, the fox will find more difficulty than the hedgehog. Still, it can be difficult if all these fragments and specifics are not arranged into some manageable set.
This takes me to my final point.
The Complex World : Be a meta-fox !
For the answer you’ve been waiting for… Fox or Hedgehog??
Well… People are not ‘one thing’, and too frequently, in pursuit of simplification, we conflate different issues into a messy soup (a theme, in FDS : Fuzzy thinking has to be coupled with an awareness of all the approximations we are making). This is a problem in personality tests, in culture research, and in political polls.
The world is not only complex, but is highly layered, and the answer to the question might lie there. People, societies, and cultures are complex and always changing.
An arbitrary label might cause more harm than gain.
On some level, we have to be hedgehogs, acquiring necessary specialization skills and focusing on particular endeavors. On another level, we have to be open to assimilate new inputs and change our behavior and thinking. The trick lies in blending the focus, with acceptance of plurality, and a mental flexibility. Yet again, above that, we have to find a unifying theme, and so on…
So it is hedgehog, fox, hedgehog, fox, etc… It is “Turtles all the way!!”.
In a sense, you have to be some kind of a meta-fox, juggling fox-ness and hedgehog-ness as you move through the layers of the personal, social, and economic reality…
I hope that – in my attempt to de-oversimplify – I didn’t complicate things.
Relevant Resources:
Think-Grow Knowledge Modules
The Think-Grow Knowledge Modules are mini-libraries of book summaries, each giving a wide (wise) enough view of a specific field.
They offer a simpler, wiser, and more convenient approach to reading about different fields. The Better Brain Library in particular has summaries of books on intelligence, thinking, and mental training.