More than half the $881m Datacom turned over last financial year was from its New Zealand business.
"The challenge with success is you've got to convince yourself you're going to need to change and you don't want to break the things or the elements of that success," Davidson says. "That was the heart of that comment.
"When you've got a place that is by and large succeeding, it feels that it's succeeding, how do you retain that level of competitiveness, customer focus, staff focus, over time?"
Davidson says there are many threads to maintaining success over the long term and it's hard to distil those into simple statements. However, he says the firm's stable ownership and leadership are a factor.
Datacom, which celebrates 50 years in business this year, is still closely held by interests linked to the company founders, in combination with the New Zealand Superannuation Fund, "which gives huge benefits to a company like ours in being able to invest for the long term and be able to do it without having to tell the world".
High-profile investments have included about about $90 million spent on data centres in Auckland and Hamilton, but under the hood there has also been a lot of investment in services and intellectual property (IP) to tackle government, local government and healthcare markets.
"[The shareholders] know that we've got to reinvest in infrastructure, IP and know-how and active IP in the sense of actual developed code software that we can then sell in order to continue making progress. That's happening all over the company."
Davidson says a focus, on the things that bind you is also important for continued success. "I think there are a strong sense of values that underpin this place.
"Of course the bigger the workforce you've got, the more effort that has to go into making sure they're all well understood and they're all embraced consistently.
"The second thing is, it helps to have goals that catalyse you."
He says at the time of his appointment as chief executive it became apparent that the market would shift significantly. The need for major investments in data centres and cloud services would see most of the market held by a small number of players. "We figured we needed to be one of the largest two in the market in most of the spheres we operate in, in order to be still relevant, so we went after scale in some extent or another."
With close to 4000 staff, there is every flavour of IT at Datacom - from the services valued for solid, 24/7 reliability to creating the next wave of innovation in the manner of a nimble start-up.
Davidson says it can be a challenge to manage the more inventive end of the business without crushing innovation. "You want to unleash the good folk and let them do their thing but you also want them to pay mind to the fact that they operate in a larger place.
"I keep referring to all these paradoxes where there is no right answer but you've just got to continue to judge where you sit on the continuum."
Davidson says that with scale has come the "slow-dawning realisation" that people were looking to the company to voice what it thinks.
He says it is still quite foreign to be thought of as a leader with an opinion worth listening to, but having earned those stripes he is conscious of ensuring that voice is used responsibly to make a difference.
Keeping a local business at the top, particularly in a market where there are big players snapping at your heels, has been helped by a willingness to constantly stare quite critically at where it is, and therefore where it has to go to get better.
It's a hard discipline to maintain but one that's really important. Davidson says the downside of success is once you're in first spot you have a target on your back. "The trick really is how you sustain it."
Datacom
• Founded: 1965
• Revenue (2013-14): $881m
• After-tax profit:$51.4m
• Staff: Almost 4000
