Is your company good to grow?

—Alex and Axel

To celebrate the 60th birthday of McKinsey Quarterly, the McKinsey Classics newsletter is dedicating a full year to enduring Quarterly articles that were ahead of their time. Also, check out our latest special-themed birthday issue of the Quarterly, on the future of growth, available now.

What’s a company’s surest way to grow? If you said innovation, you’re not wrong. Many of the world’s top-performing businesses are innovative growers. But there’s more than one way to get to Rome. In fact, growth strategies that focus on a single route run the risk of leaving potential growth on the table. To wit, leading growers share a common characteristic: They pursue multiple paths to growth.

So how do they do it? They start by taking a diversified approach to growth. As the authors of this McKinsey Quarterly classic noted, companies typically exhibit three basic growth profiles: investors know the best sources of funding, creators build new products, and performers grow by optimizing their operations. And while innovation can be alluring, the authors found that most above-average growers master either the investor or performer profiles—and the best ones master both.

Once a company has decided on which growth paths to take, the next step is to sequence its growth initiatives in a deliberate, structured way. That involves securing organizational support through the right incentives and training and then fostering an appropriate culture. For more, read Duncan Miller and Ryan Paulowsky’s 2018 classic, “Choosing the right path to growth.”

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—Edited by Drew Holzfeind, editor, Chicago 

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