How to Grow When Markets Don't: Discovering the New Drivers of Growth

I've read three of Adrian Slywotzky's books during the last twelve months and I'm deeply inspired by his bright ideas on the art of profitability. This book focuses on how to profit via growth. The key chapters are those that lay out the concepts behind "hidden assets" (that can be exploited to create value in new markets) and "demand innovation" (how to explore new ways to solve customer problems via external analysis). This is the universe of HIDDEN ASSETS that may be leveraged in a growth strategy: 1) Traditional Intellectual assets (intellectual property, competency/skills, and brand). 2) Customer relationships (reach/many, interaction/deep or frequent contact, insight/knowledge, authority/reputation). 3) Strategic real estate (unique value chain position, competitive market position, portal/gateway). 4) Networks (third-party relationships/partners, installed base/post-sale owners, user community, and deal flow/preferential access to potential transactions/M & As). 5) Information (market window, technical know-how, software and systems, by-product information). I found many of the case stories very inspiring, although the well-explained out-of-the-box story of "Cardinal Health" stood out as the most exciting. The book draws on Slywotzky's previous books. It pursues the eternal theme ... that the path to profitability lies in truly understanding your current and future customers. Being a business development manager, I search for relevant tools to apply the growth ideas to my own business. The cases in the book are very good and on the website for this book - demandinnovation.com -, you'll find the core ideas in a graphical form as well as an excellent 32-page companion workbook on "Getting Started". I also highly recommend Slywotzky's "Profit Zone" (1997/2002) and "Art of Profitability" (2002). Note that these books present the same 23 profit models, first as a standard business strategy book, then as an easy-to-read novel. If you're interested in other strategy books on Growth, let me draw your attention to "Blue Ocean Strategy" by Kim & Mauborgne (2005), "Profitable Growth" by Charan (2004), and "Beyond the Core" by Zook (2004). Peter Leerskov, MSc in International Business (Marketing & Management) and Graduate Diploma in E-business

I frequently refer to Adrian Slywotzky's previous books as we respond to a rapidly changing market environment among our software customers, and found How to Grow to be a very useful source of new ideas. Slywotzky and co-author Rick Wise concisely frame the growth challenge faced in many industries today, and help the reader in identifying several tangible options for driving revenue and profitability, even in the current market.The overall format is familiar to readers of Slywotzky's Profit Zone: The first chapter describes the challenge and suggests a response. The middle chapters provide fresh case studies that illustrate how companies across a range of industries have successfully overcome declining growth trends in their traditional business model. The final chapters bring together the common themes from the case examples, and construct an initial set of tools that a leadership team can use can use to identify tangible new opportunities in their own business.The factors driving the growth challenge--- maturity and commoditization of many key product lines, decreasing returns to new product and line extension investment, increasing saturation of new geographic markets, limited remaining industry consolidation opportunity in many markets, to name a few-are becoming well understood. Forbes publisher Rich Karlgaard frequently writes that even the tech industry is waking up to find that many more customers care about products being cheaper than being faster. Slywotzky and Wise don't dwell on this topic, but encourage the reader to ask which drivers may be slowing growth in their own industry.I found the examples of "demand innovation" to be particularly helpful. These are drawn from a range of industries, presumably including several of Slywotzky's and Wise's consulting clients. Many examples are industries seldom used as case studies on the business speaker circuit, including check printing, lawn care equipment, and automobiles. The fresh material is very instructive. It is quite likely that the reader will find a case example that provides a close analogy to his or her own business.As with the Profit Zone, the book concludes by providing an outline and set of tools of how to engage an organization in a process to define their own growth challenge and identify actionable responses. It doesn't try to be a recipe book, but it's a very helpful "preflight check list", which increases the likelihood that a valuable opportunity isn't overlooked. The menu of options emphasizes the importance of understanding the customer structure, the customer's activity chain around the product, and the value of the information created in the interaction with the customers. Even companies that have implemented effective downstream business models are likely to find ideas that help extend the creativity in identifying new opportunities.I read through the book quickly to understand the major themes and keep it handy as a reference when developing new initiatives.

This book is very good, filled with useful ideas.The authors analyze companies from a variety of industries, many of which faced low growth or no growth markets, and identify the innovations in thought and practices that laid the foundation for future, sustained growth.They provide the kind of ideas, grounded in real-world examples, that will help you to find and apply new approaches to trigger growth in your business. In the tradition of other good books, this book prompts you to ask the right questions, ending each chapter with a series of questions to help you to capitalize on your business' unique strengths and hidden assets.A worthwhile read.

Given that the US economy continues to sputter along and theopportunities for growth in many industries remain scarce, I think thatthis book is should be on every manager's "to read" list for its freshpoint of view on the issue of how to grow a large, mature business.Slywotzky and Wise' argument that in today's economic climatetraditional product innovation supported by global expansion andacquisitions will no longer be sufficient for most companies runsagainst traditional growth thinking but struck a chord with me.They go on to offer valuable guidance, supported by a variety ofcompelling and fresh examples, on how companies in mature industries canfind new growth by identifying customer "higher order needs" thatrepresent new opportunities and then using their "hidden assets" to meetthese needs profitably.The book also departs from many other management/strategy books inaddressing head-on the organizational challenges associated with makingnew growth concepts work in large companies. I found the description oforganizational barriers to growth hauntingly familiar and theprescriptions on how to work around them practical and well-grounded inthe real world experiences of the companies profiled.If I have any criticism of the book, it is that I would have liked tohave seen more discussion around shorter-term growth tactics. Theauthors do devote a chapter to this topic, with some interestingexamples of ways to pursue higher order growth right now, but in today'senvironment, the importance of short-term improvement can't beoverstated.All in all, Slywotzky and Wise have come up with thought-provokingmanifesto for finding a path to growth amid a stagnant economy.