that is ruled by complexity, unpredictability, volatility and The greatest danger in times of the intricate interdependencies between connected parts, being slow and inflexible is frankly dangerous. turbulence is not the turbulence; Peter Drucker, it is to act with yesterday’s logic. author and management There is no denying that this slow and seriously consid- consultant ered approach did make sense at one time, of course. TV ads, for instance, were (and still are) extremely expensive. Getting it wrong, meant losing a lot of cold hard cash. So The fox and the marketers cultivated a low tolerance of failure and thought hedgehog: why Before we go into more details about agile very slowly and prudently–backed up by a lot of expensive marketing, let me first tell you author and stat- market research and focus groups–about what their next agile marketing istician Nate Silver’s story of the fox and the approach would be. They made (long term) plans and care- makes sense hedgehog. According to him hedgehogs are fully stuck to them. Made sense. But with cheaper channels those people who tend to see the world through like websites, online tests and social media that are so their ‘big ideas’ about the role of government, the much more flexible - and fast - it no longer does. effect of taxes on the economy, etc. They are ’type A’ personalities who believe in governing principles about the world that behave as though they were physical laws and undergird Our current world is actually too complex to be stabilized, virtually every interaction in society.” They tend to be specialized, they believe order can be structured and predicted. Static, locked in and uncom- accomplished and are usually very reluctant to change their predictions. promising organizations will not be able to survive in this environment. “It is those organisms best adapted to the The Fox knows many things, but the 2 environment that will have a greater chance of surviving” , Hedgehog knows one big thing. 9 remember? And agile marketing is just the right way to Archilochus, approach an unstable market, knowledgeable customers Greek poet and an increasingly fast competition. Foxes, on the other hand, are “scrappy creatures who believe in a plethora of little ideas and in taking a multitude of approaches toward a problem.” Silver feels that ‘foxes’ make better