Preparing your organization for growth - McKinsey Quarterly

Companies that address their organizational weaknesses as they implement growth strategies give themselves an advantage.

Most senior managers pay close attention to the strategic side of growth—the “wheres,” “whens,” and
“hows.” Yet many underestimate the importance of organizational factors in translating a growth strategy into reality. This oversight can dampen a company’s growth plans: organizational processes and
structures that are well suited to today’s challenges may well buckle under the strain of new demands or
make it impossible to meet them. Likewise, key employees may lack the skills needed to cope with the additional complexity that growth brings. By reviewing the experiences of three organizations that faced the stresses imposed by new growth initiatives, this article seeks to illustrate such “pain points” and
suggests some approaches for coping with them.

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Growth Through Focus - Less is More: A Blueprint for Driving Profitable Expansion: s+b

This strategy+business article is well research and offers a comparative view on the advantages of thinking about growth as focus rather than growth as more. Faced with economic headwinds, many global corporations are struggling to grow their businesses profitably. In the consumer packaged goods business, for example, the worldwide recession has hurt premium brands as consumers have traded down to cheaper brands, private labels, or generics. In the retailing business, same-store sales are flat or declining for numerous companies. Meanwhile, many business leaders continue to seek growth by extending their existing product lines and brands, as well as by entering new geographic regions. After all, growth is supposed to be about “more” — more products on the shelf, more categories, more brands, and more markets. However, this approach is exactly the opposite of what business leaders should do to drive increased revenues and profits. A typical “growth through more” strategy

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Three Ways to Distinguish an Edge from a Fringe - John Hagel III, John Seely Brown, and Lang Davison - Harvard Business Review

We believe in the power of edges. We even named our research outfit at Deloitte the Center for the Edge. It seems reasonable to ask, though: what is an edge? And how does it differ from a fringe? Fringes are marginal, by definition. A political group with extreme views. An artistic movement without commercial ambition or potential. Most of us try to avoid the fringes, unless we're trying to make a point of some kind, because fringes rarely lead anywhere useful. They're dead ends, to mix metaphors. They neither grow big nor powerful enough to influence the center — which we call the core — of society and commerce.

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