Unknown 'T'...

Have you ever read the book called 'Good to Great' by Jim Collins? Really a good one. Even otherwise, this book introduces the Hedgehog concept which basically gives an idea on how a company should invest and progress in the field of its expertise. So, here are the three circles on which a company should analyze itself.

• What you are deeply Passionate About?
• What you can Be the best in the world at?
• What drives your Economic Engine?

Such a good idea to think about and put into theory! Because, on a day to day basis when we think about the current day companies things don't work much in that fashion. We can take ofcourse Google for example, a comparatively newer company, is rocking and expanding its tentacles on all directions where its core business has nothing to do!

Alright, atleast Google is experimenting and is understandable. But what surprises me is the big leader in the auto industry - Toyota have a set of businesses which have nothing to do with its auto business. Kind of weird too - Housing, Roof Gardens.... Check out these set of slides!

"Toyota controls dozens of businesses that have virtually nothing to do with automaking, ranging in size from resort developer Nagasaki Sunset Marina (77% owned by Toyota), with just five employees, to Toyota Financial Services Corp., a wholly owned subsidiary with 8,000 workers and $1.7 billion in operating profits in fiscal 2005."
-- BusinessWeek

Well, all the relevant businesses are making profits. And the technology & processes from one business is being used for another. Like as stated at the BizWeek article - The Sweetpotatoes are used for making bio-degradable plastics to be used in car. The house building process uses the famous Toyota Production System - Pull System!

Likewise, the auto's remote controlled opening is used for opening houses! I guess, this may have to be seen carefully. Once I had been to my friend's house and my car was parked in front of house. One of the small kids was playing with my keys! If you can guess it - My car doors got unlocked and the worst case scneario is, my car key has the functionality to open windows remotely:)

When I was browsing through more of such slides, ran into one more. I did write about the Nokia N-Gadget N93 series phone. And now, Nokia is coming up with too many cool Designer Phones!