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From the course by University of Virginia

Business Growth Strategy

302 ratings

University of Virginia

Business Growth Strategy

302 ratings

Course 3 of 5 in the Specialization Business Strategy

Get the tools you need to analyze, evaluate and recommend specific actions organizations can take to grow their value and avoid common growth pitfalls. Learn to determine how best to build value, whether by scaling existing markets, entering established markets or creating new markets through innovation and acquisitions. Apply these concepts in case studies of industry leaders JetBlue, Starbucks, Intel Corporate Venturing and Tata Motors.

From the lesson

Growth through Scaling

Strategic growth is intentional, proactive, and consistent with a company's purpose. Taking advantage of economies of scale--growing a business by doing more of what it's already doing--is a conceptually easy but operationally complex approach to business growth. In this module, you will learn the Scenario Planning tool to identify and evaluate opportunities to scale an organization. With this tool, you'll have an effective means to understand when and where to grow and how to get there. The Starbucks case provides an opportunity for you to practice this tool and apply key concepts.

Growth through Scaling9:39

Scenario Planning5:07

Scenario Planning Step 15:38

Scenario Planning Steps 2 and 37:58

Scenario Planning Steps 4 and 56:19

Module Lessons2:35

Meet the Instructors

Michael Lenox
Senior Associate Dean and Chief Strategy Officer
Darden School of Business
Jared Harris
Samuel L. Slover Research Chair in Business Administration
Darden School of Business

We've been talking about growth and

how growth relates to strategy, and we've also been talking more specifically

about growing through scaling your existing business operations.

So we've covered a lot of ground,

let's revisit what some of the key ideas are from this discussion.

First of all, growth,

if it's to be strategic, needs to be intentional and proactive.

It can't just be a knee jerk reaction to external pressures.

Those pressures exist, but I have encouraged you to think more carefully

about how to grow in a way that's intentional and

not just as a reaction to external pressures to grow.

Second of all, strategic growth needs to advance your mission or

purpose as an organization.

In other words,

you need to really understand why it is you are attempting to grow.

Now, once you've satisfied those two criteria as it were,

there are of course several ways to grow.

You can grow through scaling your existing business operations.

You can grow through market entry.

You can grow through acquisition.

You can grow through organic innovation.

There's a number of ways to grow, but

those are all different ways to think about, there's pros and cons of each.

Effective growth strategies also have clarity

about how growth will create value.

So, consistent with the first couple of points,

it's important to understand how growth will help you better achieve, create,

develop, defend a valuable competitive position in the market segment or

industry you're operating in.

There's some other lessons.

First of all, growth strategies are risky, many things can go wrong here.

We spent quite a bit of time talking about what some of the risks are to growth.

You can make mistakes like over stretching,

you can grow too fast, you can grow too slow.

There's other risks that include things like growing your top line instead of your

bottom line, you can simply grow in the wrong direction.

So there's lots of things that can trip you up as your organization

attempts to grow.

But smart growth essentially utilizes two key ideas.

You've got to identify the right opportunity,

and then you've got to formulate a careful, robust strategy.

And we've talked about some tools, and frameworks,

that can help you do that, including scenario planning.

So I hope that this has been an interesting and

informative time we've spent together, talking about growth and

specifically talking about growth through scaling.

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