Written by: Dylan Barber
3/26/2009 7:51 AM 

I remember my Grandmother telling me this story with different animals but the parable was the same idea.  Just sort of rediscovered this in catching up on some reading last night. If have never thought that focus and knowledge were important you might want to read this short page and the pages from Chapter 5 of his book that Jim Collins makes available.

The Hedgehog Concept

Chapter 5, Pages 90-91 of Good to Great

I bring up the whole thing as I find myself distracted everyday from the things I know well (.NET) to the things I don’t know very well and don’t have lots of experience in (PHP, Perl). Simply because a client may hire me based on the right words. After rereading this parable of the Fox and the Hedgehog I am reinvigorated to not try and do PHP or Perl sites, I hate it anyways, and stick with what I know ASP.NET and DotNetNuke. Potential clients who may want PHP I am happy to talk with them and give them ideas and alternatives but when it gets to the programming I’ll help them find a Hedgehog who knows PHP and knows PHP and not a Fox who knows every strategy, or programming language, but cant see the simplicity of what the client needs.

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