Good to Great
Michael Tauber
ENGT 4983 (Energy Related Internship)
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Tulsa, Oklahoma has been named the oil capital for the nation and the world for quite awhile and is a perfect place to study the energy industry. The University of Tulsa College of Business established The TU Energy Management program in September 2006 and started accepting students in the fall of 2007. The first graduating class to obtain the Energy Management major was comprised of only two students in December 2008 and May 2009. The program today is able to maintain disciplined and competitive students by having an application process but more importantly limiting up to thirty students per academic year. The TU Energy Management Program can easily be applied as a “Hedgehog Concept”. The “hedgehog concept” refers to a parable of a hedgehog and a fox, where the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. “Hedgehogs” by and large built the good to great companies, which means that they were able to focus on one big important thing that made their companies great. Energy management is excelling by being able to maintain the main ideals set from the beginning. Also, the “flywheel and doom loop” concepts can be related to both the good to great companies but more importantly the energy management program. These two concepts can represent positive and negative momentum. The “flywheel” concept is when the program has everything in place, lots of hard work slowly but steadily forced the companies going faster and faster, with a lot of momentum. And the “doom loop” concept is when times have changed and a hard decision is needed to be made to keep the program going in a forward direction. It is always important to know where the program has been and the direction the program is heading to keep the success going.
The “Hedgehog Concept” in chapter 5, Jim Collins uses the metaphor of the hedgehog to illustrate that simplicity can sometimes lead to
ENGT 4983 (Energy Related Internship)
Good to Great by Jim Collins
Tulsa, Oklahoma has been named the oil capital for the nation and the world for quite awhile and is a perfect place to study the energy industry. The University of Tulsa College of Business established The TU Energy Management program in September 2006 and started accepting students in the fall of 2007. The first graduating class to obtain the Energy Management major was comprised of only two students in December 2008 and May 2009. The program today is able to maintain disciplined and competitive students by having an application process but more importantly limiting up to thirty students per academic year. The TU Energy Management Program can easily be applied as a “Hedgehog Concept”. The “hedgehog concept” refers to a parable of a hedgehog and a fox, where the fox knows many things, but the hedgehog knows one big thing. “Hedgehogs” by and large built the good to great companies, which means that they were able to focus on one big important thing that made their companies great. Energy management is excelling by being able to maintain the main ideals set from the beginning. Also, the “flywheel and doom loop” concepts can be related to both the good to great companies but more importantly the energy management program. These two concepts can represent positive and negative momentum. The “flywheel” concept is when the program has everything in place, lots of hard work slowly but steadily forced the companies going faster and faster, with a lot of momentum. And the “doom loop” concept is when times have changed and a hard decision is needed to be made to keep the program going in a forward direction. It is always important to know where the program has been and the direction the program is heading to keep the success going.
The “Hedgehog Concept” in chapter 5, Jim Collins uses the metaphor of the hedgehog to illustrate that simplicity can sometimes lead to