The Granularity of Growth

It is undeniable that companies need growth to continue to thrive in today’s marketplace. The question that lingers in the minds of many organizational leaders – particularly those representing large companies – is where this growth will come from and how it can be achieved.

In The Granularity of Growth, authors Viguerie, Smit, and Baghai argue that organizational leaders need to adopt a granular, rather than broad-based, approach to addressing growth. Using the results from a quantitative analysis of nearly 500 large companies, the authors encourage readers to consider their ambition for growth, chart a direction for growth, and ultimately design an architecture to support growth.

Although individuals often assume that entire industries are characterized by growth (e.g., pharmaceuticals), research suggests this notion is a fallacy. The authors propose six levels of granularity and use research to demonstrate the benefits of focusing on levels that are more fine-grained than that of the industry level.