Growth

What’s new and next in growth strategies?

Reinventing Business for Profitable, Sustainable Growth

In an era of rapid technological disruption, shifting consumer expectations, climate urgency, and geopolitical volatility, growth is no longer a straight line—it’s a dynamic, multi-dimensional challenge. The old playbook of extracting more efficiency from existing business models is running out of road. Today’s leading companies are rethinking what growth means, where it comes from, and how it can be achieved in a way that is both profitable and sustainable. What’s emerging is a new growth agenda: regenerative, data-driven, deeply customer-centered, and built to adapt.

Growth in a World of Relentless Change

Traditional growth strategies—driven by scale, cost-cutting, or market dominance—are losing relevance. Markets are fragmenting. Product cycles are shortening. Competitive advantage is increasingly intangible. In this context, growth depends less on optimizing yesterday’s model and more on creating tomorrow’s.

Successful companies are reimagining their value propositions, unlocking new business models, and moving beyond efficiency toward resilience. They’re shifting from transactional relationships to ecosystems of value; from selling more products to delivering outcomes and experiences; and from linear thinking to systems thinking. Growth today must come not just from innovation or market share, but from agility, relevance, and purpose.

Customer-Centered Growth: Relevance as your Competitive Advantage

In fast-changing markets, knowing your customer isn’t enough—you must evolve with them. The most successful growth strategies today are built on continuously listening to customers, uncovering latent needs, and delivering personalized, context-aware experiences.

Companies like Rappi in Latin America and Xiaomi in China exemplify this approach. Rappi evolved from a delivery app to a super-app ecosystem offering financial services, gaming, and wellness—all based on deep behavioral insights. Xiaomi listens to its fanbase obsessively, co-creates new products, and iterates quickly based on user feedback, giving it an edge in innovation and loyalty.

Growth now hinges on precision: understanding not just what customers buy, but why—and designing propositions that meet them in the moment, across touchpoints. AI and real-time data analytics are key enablers, allowing businesses to tailor products, content, and pricing dynamically.

Platforms and Ecosystem Thinking

Rather than growing through linear expansion, many leading companies are building platforms that enable others to grow with them. Amazon, Alibaba, and Jio have each mastered the art of ecosystem-based growth—connecting products, services, and third-party providers into integrated customer journeys.

India’s Jio, for example, used ultra-low mobile data prices to quickly build a user base of over 400 million. It then leveraged that platform to launch services in entertainment, retail, and fintech—creating a vast, interlocking growth engine. This model allows companies to scale quickly, extract data insights, and continuously cross-sell within a cohesive ecosystem.

Platform strategies are also playing out in industrial sectors, where companies like Schneider Electric are turning products into connected services, and building open platforms (like EcoStruxure) to enable sustainability and energy efficiency at scale.

Sustainable Growth, Profit Through Purpose

Sustainability is no longer a cost or a compliance issue—it’s a growth engine. Companies that embed sustainability into their strategy are finding new markets, improving margins, attracting talent, and winning loyalty from customers who increasingly align with values.

For instance, Unilever reports that its purpose-led brands grow faster and more profitably than the rest of its portfolio. Patagonia has built a powerful growth engine around regenerative values and long-term thinking. And DSM, once a coal mining company, has transformed into a science-based sustainability leader by focusing on nutrition, health, and bio-based materials.

Sustainable growth strategies often include circular economy models (designing waste out of systems), climate-positive product innovation, and solutions that address pressing social issues. Tools like life cycle assessment, carbon accounting platforms, and ESG impact scoring are becoming essential to align sustainability goals with commercial growth.

Digital Acceleration and Growth Through Reinvention

Digital is not just a channel—it’s the foundation of reinvention. Companies that lead in growth today are digitally mature, using cloud, AI, and data to streamline operations, predict market shifts, and continuously innovate their offerings.

DBS Bank in Singapore transformed from a traditional bank into a digital-first powerhouse by embedding agile teams, using AI to anticipate customer needs, and reengineering its tech stack. Its mantra: “We are a 30,000-person startup.” This reinvention has fueled strong growth, won global innovation awards, and positioned DBS as a model for others.

Digital reinvention often goes hand-in-hand with business model innovation. Companies like Kakao in Korea have expanded beyond messaging into payments, mobility, and content—leveraging digital infrastructure to open new revenue streams with minimal marginal cost.

AI, Data, and Design as New Tools for Growth

The new growth toolkit is built around three core enablers: AI, data, and design. AI helps identify patterns, forecast trends, and automate decisions. Data fuels customer intelligence and operational optimization. And design ensures that technology is humanized, experiences are seamless, and brands are emotionally resonant.

Take Shopify, which is using AI to help merchants better predict inventory needs, optimize pricing, and engage customers. Or DeepSeek, a generative AI startup in China, which is helping businesses generate new product concepts, automate R&D, and design experiences faster than ever before.

Meanwhile, companies like Apple and Nike continue to grow by investing heavily in design as a strategic differentiator—creating frictionless, emotionally rich experiences that command loyalty and premium pricing.

Culture, Networks and Talent as Growth Multipliers

Culture is the silent engine of growth. Companies that scale innovation, attract top talent, and maintain agility tend to have cultures rooted in learning, experimentation, and psychological safety.

Netflix, for example, empowers employees with radical freedom and accountability, enabling it to move fast and stay creatively bold. Atlassian’s growth has been fueled by a culture of transparency and distributed decision-making, which supports global collaboration and rapid product development.

As new generations enter the workforce with different expectations, growth depends on leadership that is inclusive, adaptive, and purpose-driven. Investing in talent development, internal entrepreneurship, and employee experience is now a strategic imperative.

Real-Time Commerce and Monetization Models

Growth is increasingly real-time. With consumers making decisions in seconds across platforms, brands must deliver offers, experiences, and value at the speed of relevance. Tools like live shopping, dynamic pricing engines, and predictive personalization are becoming essential.

In China, platforms like Pinduoduo and Douyin (TikTok China) are innovating with social commerce, livestream selling, and gamified shopping experiences—creating a constant flow of micro-moments that convert attention into revenue.

Meanwhile, the rise of subscription models, usage-based pricing, and freemium-to-premium funnels (as seen with Zoomor Figma) shows how monetization is evolving. The key is building ongoing relationships, not just one-off transactions.

Growing better, not just bigger

The future of growth is not just about doing more, but doing better. It means building businesses that can thrive in uncertainty, adapt in real time, and deliver value across financial, social, and environmental dimensions. It means growing with—rather than at the expense of—people and planet.

Leaders today must think not only like strategists and operators, but like system designers, culture shapers, and stewards of long-term value. The best growth strategies will come not from playing yesterday’s game harder, but from creating entirely new games—ones that align purpose with performance, and innovation with impact.

In short, growth is no longer just a metric—it’s a mindset. One that rewards those bold enough to reinvent.

Shaping your future 

What does the future of your market look like. Peter Fisk works across almost every sector, giving him a unique insight into what is happening in each sector, but also how you can take ideas from one sector to another:

  • The Future of Automotive: Facing its most profound change in 100 years, with autonomous vehicles, electrification and other fuels, new models of ownership and connected ecosystems. Add to this, AI and smart road infrastructure, connectivity and entertainment. Issues like safety will still matter, Volvo for example, is installing new sensors to detect poor driving, intoxication or excess speed, and take action.
  • The Future of Beauty: Personalisation and environmentally friendly products are key to the future of skin and colour products, with new science creating sophisticated functionality. Influencers like Michelle Phan rather than advertising shapes attitudes, whilst the subscription models of Birchbox and direct to consumer models of Beauty Pie have transformed the traditional purchase experience from instore to bathroom.
  • The Future of Energy: Decarbonisation, decentralisation and digitalisation are the key challenges for every power generator or distributor. As oil and gas, mining and fracking, give way to solar and wind, there is also a shift to city and home management, from local generation to automated control. Lanzatech turning waste into clean energy, Fluence a huge battery business from Siemens, and Watty are typical disruptors.
  • The Future of Fashion: New materials, new business models and new technologies are transforming fashion. From Agua Bendita’s beautiful bikinis made out of scraps to Bolt Thread’s synthetic spider silk, Unspun’s custom-made jeans using a 20 second Fit3D bodyscan to ThredUP’s resale platform, environmental impact has become the biggest issues in an industry which is one of the biggest polluters.
  • The Future of Finance: Digital entrants and emerging technologies are transforming banking, from Singapore’s DBS transforming to become “invisible” inside other services, to Atom and Number26 seeking speed and simplicity. Lemonade has embraced AI to transform the business model of insurance, while AXA explores new applications of blockchain, and cryptocurrencies continue to evolve.
  • The Future of Food: Wellness and sustainability have topped the agendas of major businesses like Danone, Nestle and Unilever, whilst animal and dairy-based categories have been challenged by plant-based alternatives such as Impossible and Beyond Meat. New channels and business models have been driven by a huge rise in snacking and on-the-go markets, plus home delivery and meal kits.
  • The Future of Healthcare: From positive health to personalised pharma, people are seeking to engage with healthcare in new ways. Combine 23andMe genetic profiling with PatientsLikeMe’s peer to peer advice, Babylon’s AI-enabled diagnostics and wearable health trackers, Minute Clinic’s simple consultations and Zipline’s drone deliveries, Organova’s 3D printed organs, gene editing and personalised medicines.
  • The Future of Media: Playing games to streaming television, virtual reality and instant messaging, have transformed how we immerse ourselves in content. New business models, in particular subscription, enable access across platforms, as we now shift to content that is even more user-generated and interactive. Platforms like Twitch and Spotify will become more important in curating content and building community.
  • The Future of Retail: In a sector dominated by Amazon, innovators like Shopify have helped direct brands to sell and deliver faster. Glossier has shown the power of community and pop-up stores, whilst Etsy has allowed artisans to reach the world, Alibaba embraces gamification to engage consumers more deeply, whilst intelligent delivery businesses like Meituan Dianping know consumers most personally.
  • The Future of Technology: AI and cloud will embed tech ever further into our lives, enabling more intelligent and individual choices and behaviours. In telecoms the shift to 5G will enable realtime engagement like never before, video-based content will accelerate with particular application to education and work, whilst our primary user interfaces will continue to shift to voice, eye tracking, and ultimately the brain.
  • The Future of Travel: AI will drive transportation to become automated, intelligent and efficient, health and environmental issues will continue to challenge airlines, hospitality and vacations. The shift to cleaner fuels and responsible tourism will be accelerated through innovations like those of Selina’s nomadic places to live, Lilium’s electric flying cars, and Ctrip in the huge Asian travel market.

Developing a growth strategy

How do you develop a strategy in a world of relentless and uncertain change? Particularly one for growth, when so many familiar markets seem stagnant or in decline? How do you make sense of all this change, what is relevant to you?

Developing a robust growth strategy requires more than setting revenue targets or launching new products—it’s about aligning ambition (purpose, vision, mission) with insight (markets, customers, dynamics), focusing resources (assets, organisation, finance), and designing a scalable path to long-term value creation.

In today’s fast-moving and complex markets, a successful growth strategy must be adaptive, customer-centered, data-informed, and deeply aligned with the company’s core purpose.

The starting point is clarity: define what kind of growth you’re aiming for—market share, customer acquisition, margin expansion, geographic reach, or new business models. Then, ground this ambition in insight. That means rigorously analyzing your market environment, identifying shifts in customer behaviour, emerging technologies, and competitor moves. Conventional strategy tools can help scan the landscape, but so can real-time customer data, social listening, and ethnographic research.

Next, focus on your customer. Growth increasingly comes from deeply understanding unmet needs and innovating new ways to meet them. Segment your market not just demographically, but psychographically—by values, behaviors, and motivations. Use customer journey mapping to find friction points and opportunities to add value. Growth often lies at the intersections: between online and offline, product and service, convenience and personalization.

Once opportunities are identified, prioritize them based on potential impact, alignment with your capabilities, and ease of execution. A clear growth thesis—why this opportunity, why now, and why you—helps focus your strategy. From here, choose the most effective levers: market penetration, product development, market development, diversification, partnerships, M&A, or digital platforms.

Execution is critical. Set measurable goals (e.g. OKRs or KPIs), allocate resources, and ensure cross-functional alignment. Build feedback loops so you can learn fast and pivot quickly. Embrace agile methods, test-and-learn cycles, and scenario planning to adapt to market changes.

Finally, growth strategies today must also address sustainability, resilience, and brand trust. Consider how your growth creates value for society and the environment—not just shareholders. Growth that is inclusive and regenerative is increasingly linked to long-term performance and relevance.

Future-back strategy is my favoured approach, starting with an ambitious purpose, a North Star, to give direction and substance to why the business exists, what it does for the world.

From their we worked through an accelerated scenario planning approach, embracing the critical uncertainties most relevant to the business and its markets. From their we developed a vision framework which then flows into a strategic roadmap, and transformational plan for innovation and growth.

Sounds simple, but there is much to it. Not least having a powerful sense of of the future, and how you will shape it to your advantage.

Harnessing the growth engines

Finding fast growth means opening your eyes to new opportunities – to the fast growth markets of Asia, Africa and South America, or to the new consumers, such as women, millennials and boomers. It means redefining purpose in a way that is relevant, refocusing strategy on markets, and particular the new profit pools, and innovating business models and customer experiences for growth. It also means ensuring that growth is profitable – it is easy to be big, but to create profits, and sustained value, is much harder.

What are the growth engines of business today?

  • Markets – finding the best spaces for growth in existing and new markets, for example in new geographies, in niche segments, in adjacent markets, or elsewhere –  in the past we assuming that we continue to focus on the same domains, today growth starts with choice of markets.
  • Customers – redefining your business around what customers seek to achieve, rather than what you do, gives you huge space to meet their needs better through more joined-up and relevant solutions – enabling them to achieve more, and you to create and capture more value.
  • Brands – using your most powerful assets to do more, extending into new markets and categories, through the lens of brands, extensions and innovation. This requires a brand that is about a bigger idea rather than limit to one product and activity.
  • Networks – forget the old thinking about core capabilities where you had to produce and distribution everything, find the best opportunities and ideas, then bring together the right partners to exploit it. Networks have an exponential effect, on supply and demand.
  • Business models – rethinking the way your business works, in particular the different revenues and cost streams. Consider alternative business models, such as freemium, subscription or time-based – both to generate income, but also to engage customers in more distinctive ways.

Strategy Maps … exploring your growth opportunities

Walt Disney’s strategy map, created in 1957, visualises how he saw the development of his ideas, how the diverse business concepts could work together, and how they would drive profitable growth.

In a fast-changing world strategy is about making choices, about direction and priorities, which are essential to focus resources and effort – but it is no longer a rigid, linear timeplan for implementation.

Instead a strategy map is multi-dimensional and helps you to explore new growth opportunities, new business models, and harness or extending your portfolio.

FutureLab … Developing your strategy together

Peter Fisk’s “FutureLab” is an accelerated, team-based strategy development process that helps you and your top team to find the best opportunities for your business future.

Developing the right growth strategy for your business starts with your inspiring purpose, making sense of the future, and a vision for how you can win in it.

It is then about insight to find the best existing and emerging profit pools, and understanding customers. And then developing the strategic horizons over which you will shape markets to your advantage, balance today and tomorrow, drive innovation and profitable growth.

Examples of recent future strategy projects include:

  • Al Ghurair: Helping one of the Middle East’s largest and most diverse businesses to develop a new purpose, vision and strategy to find new growth in its region and globally.
  • Aster: How can a low-cost textile manufacturing business reinvent itself in a world of declining margins? But becoming a design-centric, producer of incredible brands.
  • Coty: Strategic development exploring new business models for the beauty industry to reach new markets of Asia and South America, harnessing new technologies.
  • FundGrube: “Moonshot” growth strategy for the Spanish family-owned business, focused on new markets and new formats, to prioritise and accelerate profitable growth.
  • Pinar: Growth strategy for multi-national food and drink business, using market and portfolio analytics to find the most valuable options for strategic growth.
  • Sabre: Creating the future of travel and hospitality, looking for new business models and innovative experiences to support the future of travel.
  • Savola: New corporate purpose, vision, strategy and transformation to enter adjacent markets, from strong brand of commodity foods, to embrace new consumers and trends.
  • Turkcell: Growing the SME and retail business, with a strategy that focuses on how a telecoms business enables people to do more, rather than just connect them.
  • Vifor Pharma: Strategy development and planning for the world’s leading iron-deficiency business, including segmentation, creative development, future scenarios, horizon planning.
  • Virgin: Defining and launching a new financial service business, embracing the brand values to develop banking and investment products that challenge the status quo.

Explore more ideas about growth strategy: