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“Just running faster on the market share treadmill will not secure
the future of your company. With typical McKinsey rigor, [the
authors show] that where you compete is even more important
than how. A great corporate strategy book with very practical
applications.”
—Dick Anderson, former vice-chairman, BellSouth
But where does growth come from, especially in large, global companies where
a reasonable growth rate can mean hundreds of millions, if not billions of
dollars in additional revenues a year? That is the question that Patrick Viguerie
and Sven Smit, directors at McKinsey & Company, and Mehrdad Baghai,
managing director of Alchemy Growth Partners, answer in The Granularity Of
Growth (Wiley, April 2008).
Large company growth has long been an area of focus for McKinsey
& Company. A decade ago this thinking was captured in The Alchemy
of Growth with the introduction of the three horizon framework. Over
the past three years, McKinsey has undertaken a new extensive
study of large company growth to deepen its insight and support its
clients. In The Granularity of Growth, the three horizon model is
enhanced by integrating it with a more robust and granular
understanding of the sources of revenue growth.
In The Granularity of Growth, the authors demonstrate a problem with
the broad-brush way that many companies describe their business
opportunities. Large companies in particular suffer from the tyranny of
the aggregated and average view: "China is where the action is".
"Aging will generate increased demand for healthcare". Although
popular, these generalizations offer very little help to executives
looking for meaningful growth opportunities. Instead, real winning
plays can only emerge when companies take a much finer and more
granular view of their market segments, their needs, and the
capabilities required to serve them well.