Can I be an hedgehog?

After reading Good to Great by Jim Collins, I was struck by the notion that successful businesses are successful because they identify a singular area where they can be the best in the world and pursue that are rigorously. When Collins and his team lay out the evidence from their study, the conclusion seemed very substantial. Successful businesses develop around a pursuit of being the best at one thing; they are as Collins called it a hedgehog. Unlike foxes that are cunning and try to survive with diversity, hedgehogs strive by specializing in one thing: defense. And they beat foxes with this strategy.

I feel like every individual is like a separate company. Each individual has a input, output, cost, income, and profit margins that need to be considered. However, can an individual be a hedgehog? Or more importantly, would it be a good idea for a person to be a hedgehog? The definition of a hedgehog strategy is that you find what you think you can be the best in the world at and you focus on growing that core capability. Collins mentioned his wife winning the Iron Man as an example. So people can adopt hedgehog principles for their life. But would you want to? The fact that you have to define yourself isn’t what I find unappealing about a personal take on the hedgehog strategy, it is the limitation.

Over-specialization can be a disadvantage in a changing environment, like say technology or web design. But on the other hand, focusing on a technology can be part of a hedgehog strategy.

Looking at hedgehogs makes me think that we are on the cusp of a new ideology about the ideal self. It was that renaissance men (and women) where what people strived to become. DeVinci, Jefferson, de Medici, and Tesla, these were the examples placed before me. These people were not hedgehogs. They were not foxes. The only animal that could describe their action would be human. Why should we place limits on ourself? It may be harder to accomplish, but wouldn’t it be better to strive for excellence all around than to build up on aspect and ignore the others? Maybe it is too much, and we live in a new economy. Not one that discourages the principles that are in Good to Great, but an age defined by them.