Every new business we've ever engaged in has initially been seen as a distraction by people externally, and sometimes even internally.

Broadly speaking, organic growth can come from natural expansion of the core business, moves into near-in adjacent markets, and the creation of entirely new growth businesses. Companies need to have a rough estimate of their ultimate top-line and bottom-line goals, and how much growth they can reasonably expect to get from each of those three categories.

…a growth policy needs to be able to distinguish between healthy growth, fat, and cancer ― all three are ‘growth,’ but surely all three are not equally desirable.

The development of valuable new businesses is the toughest challenge in business - far more difficult than sustaining an existing enterprise. Existing businesses benefit from inertia: customers won't switch unless they are given a good reason, few employees leave voluntarily unless their compensation falls significantly below market rates, and returns on sunk investment may persist at substandard levels as long as a company can't generate more cash by selling the assets. In contrast, rapid growth requires a dramatically superior value proposition that gives customers of other companies a reason to switch, sufficiently attractive compensation to attract large numbers of new employees, and returns on capital that draw new investors. Our own research shows that rapid growth typically requires a company to be about 20 percent better than would be required to sustain the business.