Turning the Flywheel: A Monograph to Accompany Good to Great

The critical question is not, will you get luck? But what will you do with the luck that you get? If you get a high return on a luck event, it can add a big boost of momentum to the flywheel. Conversely, if you are ill-prepared to absorb a bad-luck event, it can stall or imperil the flywheel. This concept is fully developed in the book Great by Cho

Robert Burgelman once observed to a classroom full of students in 1982 (of which I was one), the greatest danger in business and life lies not in outright failure but in achieving success without understanding why you were successful in the first place.

In creating a good-to-great transformation, there’s no single defining action, no grand program, no single killer innovation, no solitary lucky break, no miracle moment.

When you’re facing chaos and uncertainty, and you cannot possibly predict what’s coming around the corner, your best “strategy” is to have a busload of people who can adapt and perform brilliantly no matter what comes next.

resource engine. Does the flywheel fit

But how to turn a single product into a sustained flywheel, especially as a garage start-up? Gentes studied Nike and gleaned an essential insight. There’s a hierarchy of social influence for athletic gear. If, for instance, you get a Tour de France winner to wear your helmet, serious nonprofessional cyclists will want to wear that helmet, which the

Test the flywheel against your list of successes and disappointments. Does your empirical

ask, “What do these successes and disappointments tell us about the possible components of our flywheel?

The Hedgehog Concept is a simple, crystalline concept that flows from deep understanding about the intersection of the following three circles: (1) what you’re deeply passionate about, (2) what you can be the best in the world at, and (3) what drives your economic or resource engine. When a leadership team becomes fanatically disciplined in making