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Innovation Strategies |
Fast Growing Company ("Gazelle") Creating and Managing an Innovative High-Growth Business |
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By Vadim Kotelnikov, Founder, Ten3 BUSINESS e-COACH – Innovation Unlimited, 1000ventures.com
"In business you cannot discover new hights unless you have the courage to leave the ground." – Seth Godin
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Fast-Growing Firm Is Defined A gazelle company is an American expression for small, fast growing companies, that creates many job opportunities. Fast growing firms ("gazelles") are publicly traded companies that have grown at least 20% for each of the last four years, starting with at least US$ 1 million in sales. Venture Management Management of the venture-building process is fundamentally different from corporate management that is focused on delivering the annual operating plan. Management of a new high-growth business is built around a customer-driven idea or a technology. It requires entrepreneurial mindset and skills. Being first to the market is the top priority for the venture manager. Your core competence, the ability to move quickly from idea to market, is a key enabler of success.
The Most Important Tasks A survey of fast-growth companies performed by the Ivey Institute for Entrepreneurship, Canada asked business leaders to rank tasks and practices by difficulty and importance. Here are the five most important tasks identified by firms with the fastest growth rates:
Sustainable Competitive Advantage Sustainable competitive advantage allows the maintenance and improvement of the enterprise's competitive position in the market. It is an advantage that enables business to survive against its competition over a long period of time... More
Managing Rapid Growth Raid growth can be a killer. Research7 has shown that the primary reason fast-growing firms may struggle or fail is not shrinking demand for their products or, but their inability to perform the myriad tasks required to sustain rapid expansion. Getting it all done is a pressing concern for many of today's business leaders. The CEO of a rapid-growth firm has a particular set of challenges, from managing cash flow and choosing partners for alliances to fostering an open work environment and obtaining employee buy in. Poor product quality, missed deadlines and reduced customer service are symptoms of the real problems they face in this unique situation: management's inability to cope with the organizational vicissitudes of growth.
Growth Attitude Growth attitude is a combination of skill, experience, and judgment, with a dash of courage and a dose of arrogance. This attitude establishes a context within which new managers lead by setting direction, creating enterprise strategy, securing resources, defining organization architecture, and ensuring that learning occurs. The Growth Attitude is essential in order to overcome the stagnation of operations and the complacency that naturally occurs as firms age... More Entrepreneurial Leadership In the new era of rapid changes and knowledge-based enterprises, managerial work becomes increasingly a leadership task. Leadership is the primary force behind successful change. Leaders empower employees to act on the vision. They execute through inspiration and develop implementation capacity networks through a complex web of aligned relationships. Entrepreneurial leadership involves instilling the confidence to think, behave and act with entrepreneurship in the interests of fully realizing the intended purpose of the organization to the beneficial growth of all stakeholders involved.
The Role of Innovation Becoming an industry leader requires significant revenue growth beyond what can be attributed to incremental efficiency improvements. The essential ingredient is radical innovation that gives the innovation leaders a substantial edge in faster revenue growth. More than three-quarters of CEOs of fast-growing companies cited innovation as their strongest competitive advantage, according to a PricewaterhouseCoopers survey... More Radical Innovation Radical innovation, concerned with exploration of new technology, is fundamentally different from incremental innovation that is concerned with exploitation of existing technology. Long-term corporate success linked to the ability to innovate. Although corporate investment in improvements to existing products and processes does bring growth, it is new game changing breakthroughs that will launch company into new markets, enable rapid growth, and create high return on investment. Radical innovation should be a continued activity to help your company reinvent itself and maintain its leadership. Incremental innovation allows you address the ever-changing needs of current customers and keeps cash flow healthy, but it must be supplemented by periodic infusion of radical innovation that creates a new market niche or adds new disruptive value to the existing marketplace, changes the game and provides a platform for the long-term growth... More
The Importance of Being First-to-Market... Creating Sustainable Profit Growth: 9 Questions to Answer... Entrepreneurial Organization... Mobilizing Your Organization... Change and Leadership... What Today's Workplace Needs Its Leaders To Do... Creative Leadership... Continuous Rewriting of Leadership Rules... New-to-the-World Product Development... Owning Your Competitive Advantage...
Leading
Transformational Change Making Big Changes... 10 Steps to Develop Entrepreneurial Staff... Principles for Driving Growth Through Innovation...
Value Innovation...
Best Practices for Maintaining The Effectiveness
and Efficiency...
Integrating E-business... Case in Point 3M... Case in Point Charles Schwab... Case in Point Dell Computers...
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Bibliography:
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"Changing Strategic Direction", Peter Skat-Rørdam, 2003
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"Relentless Growth", Christopher Meyer, 1998
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"Driving Growth Through Innovation", Robert B. Tucker, 2002
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"Devising Business Strategies", White Paper by PlanWare
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"Every Business Is a Growth Business," Ram Charan and Noel M. Trichy, 1998
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"Rapid Growth Firm: The Challenge of Managing Information Technology," C. Saunders and Y. Chan, 2002
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Survey of Fast-growth Companies, Ivey Institute for Entrepreneurship, 2000
