Finding Growth Beyond the Core
Learn how BCG partnered with a client to identify and align around major long-term growth platforms.
Industrial Co., a major global company, needed to reignite its growth. The company had found two important waves of growth in the prior 30 years and was looking to identify and align around a third.
The company sought BCG's help in developing a growth strategy—based on a rigorous assessment of opportunities within, adjacent to, and outside of its core business—that would lead to breakout performance.
Too many growth projects fail. They yield great plans and thick binders, but the organization fails to align around them—or even sometimes works to actively kill them.
Consequently, we explicitly designed a highly engaging and experiential process that would involve dozens of key managers from all across the organization in idea generation, analysis, business-case development, and "learning journeys" to hear from customers and experts—and to see new markets firsthand.
We started with a broad list of megatrends likely to affect the company and its customers and prioritized them in conjunction with the client team. Jointly with the client, based on this foundation of trend knowledge and assessments of both regional and sectoral microeconomic dynamics, we then brainstormed a long list of potential growth opportunities that might have impact across one or more business units.
Next, the opportunities were winnowed down to a short list, for which detailed business cases were developed. Finally, a small number of significant opportunities were selected from this short list.
This structured, participative process worked. On the basis of four priority megatrends, the team surfaced more than more than 200 possible opportunities and funneled them down to five using rigorous investment-return criteria.
BCG's megatrends-driven approach helped the client to see many emerging growth opportunities that had not been on its radar. The broad participation and key workshops created strong alignment around the opportunities that were ultimately selected.
Armed with business cases, entrepreneurial passion, and an aligned vision, the client team secured the investment capital needed to pursue the opportunities. The broad involvement of staff has created strong traction for growth, as well as renewed energy and vision. The company has already built the first of the new growth platforms and is currently on track to build the rest.