7. 7 - Technology Accelerators
  • Good-to-great companies think differently about technology and technological change than mediocre ones.
  • Good-to-great organizations avoid technology fads and bandwagons, yet they become pioneers in the application of carefully selected technologies.
  • The key question about any technology is, Does the technology fit directly with your Hedgehog Concept? If yes, then you need to become a pioneer in the application of that technology.  If no, then you can settle for parity or ignore it entirely.
  • The good-to-great companies used technology as an accelerator of momentum, not a creator of it.  None of the good-to-great companies began their transformations with pioneering technology, yet they all became pioneers in the application of technology once they grasped how it fit with their three circles and after they hit breakthrough.
  • You could have taken the exact same leading-edge technologies pioneered at the good-to- great companies and handed them to their direct comparisons for free, and the comparisons still would have failed to produce anywhere near the same results.
  • How a company reacts to technological change is a good indicator of its inner drive for greatness verus mediocrity.  Great companies respond with thoughtfulness and creativity, driven by a compulsion to turn unrealized potential into results; mediocre companies react and lurch about, motivated by fear of being left behind.
Unexpected Findings
  • The idea that technological change is the principal cause in the decline of once-great companies (or the perpetual mediocrity of others) is not supported by the evidence.  Certainly, a company can't remain a legend and hope to be great, but technology by itself is never a primary root cause of either greatness or decline.
  • Across eighty-four interviews with good-to-great executives, fully 80 percent didn't even mention technology as one of the top five factors in transformation.  This is true even in companies famous for their pionneering application of technology, such as Nucor.
  • "Crawl, walk, run" can be a very effective approach, even during times of rapid and radical technological change.
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