Accelerating Growth at IE Business School

May 5, 2025 at IE Business School, Madrid

How can you accelerate growth?

Markets are volatile and uncertain, winners rise and losers fall, competition intensifies and customer have a relentless desire for better. Of course biggest is not always best. Market share is rarely a measure of profitability, let alone value creation, today. Growth is typically found in profitable niches, where you can grow further, focused and faster.

The best organisations are exponential – they harness technology, but also new business and market models – physical and digital – to accelerate value creation.

Consider the similar but different stories of Amazon and Apple.

When Jeff Bezos jumped in his VW Campervan and headed west to Seattle in 1994 he was dreaming of creating “the world’s largest bookstore”, an online retail platform. And for the first decade e-commerce dominated Amazon’s growth, as it moved from books to music, to everything. Indeed we still think of Amazon as a retail business, but it’s much more.

The graphic below illustrates the growth of new business models, evolving from the original idea – initially in advertising, then as a marketplace (the controversial but inspiring decision to start selling competitors products on the same platform), and then to subscriptions (Amazon Prime has over 200 million subscribers worldwide driving revenue for 2024 of $32.87 billion).

Then came Amazon Web Services (essentially enabling other companies to use Amazon’s tech for their own platforms – it is a cloud platform offering computing, storage, databases, analytics and more – now the world’s most widely used cloud platform), which is the real profit engine of Amazon today.

You see a similar story with Apple, although slightly differently.

While Apple grew up as a computer business, the Mac, it was really the iPhone that sparked Apple’s incredible global growth. However, the real innovation then came in business models, and most significantly the App Store. From here, you can see the incredible growth of services driving a significant proportion of today’s profitability. This is partly about gaining a share of other companies revenues – from Google search, to Amazon shopping, to Roblox games, accessed through apps on the iPhone – but also from Apple’s own services, from productivity and cloud, to music and health.

Growth is the oxygen of business. It is a relentless journey towards better. It doesn’t necessarily mean being the biggest, but it does mean driving progress. Doing more, achieving more. Yes, over time, it needs to be profitable. And yes it needs to be sustainable, enduring and with positive impact.

  • How do you drive and sustain profitable growth?
  • Does it mean doing more? Or less, by doing the best things better?
  • Is it all about smarter selling, or more about innovating?
  • To existing markets and customers, or looking beyond to new opportunities?
  • How does growth fit with sustainability, and using less natural resources?
  • Can inorganic growth replace the need for real, organic growth?
  • Is growth still the primary way to drive long-term value creation financially?
  • Does growth need a strategy, and active leadership, or is it just a result?
  • What inspires growth, sustains growth, and accelerates growth?

Growth is not obvious. And often confused. Profitable growth is the key driver of value creation.

So how can you accelerate growth?

Consider the automotive market. Tesla has the highest growth rate (around 35% CAGR over 5 years). And while Volkswagen sells 4 times more cars than Tesla ($335 billion to $95 billion revenue in 2023), Tesla is almost 10 times more valuable than Volkswagen ($650 billion vs $65 billion in terms of market cap). Ferrari is the most profitable (25% operating margin to Tesla’s 14%), but is even less valuable than VW, with almost no growth. Tesla, of course, is also the most sustainable.

So what drives, sustains, and accelerates, profitable growth?

Here we explore some of the most interesting growth companies, with links to their latest performance – selected to demonstrate the different approaches to growth, as well as their performance:

Growth Champion: Amazon

“Earth’s most customer-centric company” has been a relentless growth business for over more than 25 years, from online bookstore to everything store, since Jeff Bezos started out in his garage, back in 1994. Critical to growth has been a long-term perspective, driven initially by private ownership, extension to a marketplace platform, the broader partner ecosystem, the flywheel model, Prime customer membership, and its most profitable business, AWS.

Growth Champion: Authentic Brands

Jamie Salter leads Authentic, experts in taking tired old brands and finding new growth. Authentic started with celebrity brands – like Marilyn Monroe and Elvis Presley, and more recently David Beckham. Since then it has rejuvenated brands including Reebok, Forever 21, Juicy Couture, Nine West, and Ted Baker. The business model is to take charge of the brand and business strategy, while leaving partners to operate, and create synergies between brands.

Growth Champion: Coca-Cola

Growth becomes harder as a business matures. Coca-Cola has learnt to keep evolving as markets, consumer tastes and cultures change. Key has been to retain a “human-centric” approach to brand experience, with deep insight into consumers, and the broader cultural context, leading to identifying new niches, new products, new channels, new engagement, and an ever-shifting portfolio. Innovation examples include AI-driven Coca Cola Creations, and Project Shaken, a cocktail mixer.

Growth Champion: Crocs

People who love to hate Crocs had cause to celebrate in 2008, when investors were writing the company off as a passing fad.  Crocs lost over $185 million that year and stock plunged to just over $1 a share from a high of about $69 a year earlier. But now they are back from the dead, sold 700 million pairs in the last decade, and have become a cultural icon. Crocs are a top brand among Gen Z. And limited edition Crocs are selling for up to $1,000 on the resale market.

Growth Champion: Essilor Luxottica

The Italian French company is the global leader in the design, manufacture and distribution of eyewear. It licenses many leading brands to develop premium eyewear including Ray-Ban, Oakley, Costa, Vogue Eyewear and Persol. It offers superior shopping and patient experiences with a network of 18,000 stores including world-class retail brands like Sunglass Hut, LensCrafters, Salmoiraghi & Viganò and GrandVision.

Growth Champion: LVMH

LVMH, from Christian Dior to over 70 luxury brands, including Louis Vuitton and Givenchy, Sephora and Tiffany, has multiplied 20 times in market value under the leadership of Bernard Arnault. In 1984 he spotted an opportunity to acquire a finance company that had lost its way, but still owned some interesting assets including Christian Dior, and department store Le Bon Marche. He quickly set about refocusing the business and reenergising its best assets for a changing world.

Growth Champion: Mercado Libre

Mercado Libre is on a mission “to democratize commerce and financial services to transform the lives of millions of people in Latin America”. It hosts the largest online commerce and payments ecosystem in Latin America, and operates in 18 countries, although Brazil alone accounts for 65% of its revenue, growing to 96% when including Argentina and Mexico. MELI was founded in 1999 by Marcos Galperin and two colleagues while at Stanford.

Growth Champion: Novo Nordisk

Novo Nordisk is a global healthcare company, based in Denmark, with more than 90 years of innovation and leadership with a clear focus on diabetes care. It’s innovation is patient-centric, focused on what it can be best at, and delivered by one of the world’s most sustainable companies. Most recently, a new diabetes drug Ozempic was found to have remarkable side effects, creating significant weight loss in patients. It has now become the world’s most in-demand obesity drug.

Growth Champion: Nubank

Nubank launched in 2013 with the mission to fight complexity to empower people in their daily lives by reinventing financial services. Its first product was a credit card that differentiated itself by not charging traditional fees, such as annual fees or over-limit fees, and all based in a digital app. It is now one of the world’s largest digital banking platforms, serving more than 80 million customers across Brazil, Mexico, and Colombia.

Growth Champion: Nvidia

AI is transforming our world. The software that enables computers to do things that once required human perception and judgment depends largely on hardware made possible by Jensen Huang who cofounded Nvidia in 1993. In 2024, Nvidia’s earnings are forecast to increase at a compound annual growth rate of 103% over the next five years. That would be more than double the 48% CAGR Nvidia’s bottom line has clocked in the past five years.

Growth Champion: On

Olivier Bernhard is on a mission to “ignite the human spirit through movement” and to make Swiss brand On “the most premium global sportswear brand”. The former triathlete devoted himself to finding a running shoe that would give him the perfect running sensation. In doing so he crossed paths with a like-minded Swiss engineer who had an idea for a new kind of running shoe. In 2010 he got together with two friends to develop a product range fully engineered in Switzerland.

Growth Champion: Ping An

Ping An is the world’s largest insurance business, and more generally provides products and services through its five ecosystems in financial services, healthcare, auto services, real estate services and smart city solutions. The company’s first steps beyond finance started in 2012. Co-CEO Jessica Tan has developed a vision of “technology plus finance” as key to Ping An’s ongoing growth, most notably with Good Doctor as the world’s leading digital healthcare platform.

Growth Champion: Temu

The Pinduoduo-owned online fashion. retail platform burst into western markets in September 2022, and immediately outperformed the similar Shein business, and has continued to gain more visitors than Amazon. While Chinese owned, Temu is a US registered company, based in Boston USA. It’s focus is on super-cheap, super-fast, medium-quality fashion, using an on-demand super-fast business model. Sales are driven by social media, live-streaming, relentless offers, and gamification.

Growth Champion: Tencent

Tencent is a tech ecosystem, with a purpose “Value for Users, Tech for Good”. It’s social platforms WeChat (known as Weixin in China) and QQ connect users with each other, with digital content and daily life services in just a few clicks. It was founded in 1998 by Ma Huateng,  known as Pony Ma, in Shenzhen. Launched in 2011, WeChat has grown into the most popular and widely used mobile app globally, and serves as a central part of daily life for its many users in China and beyond.

Growth Champion: Tesla

Faster than a Ferrari, powered by the sun. Tesla was founded in 2004 “to accelerate the world’s transition to sustainable energy”. Elon Musk took over as CEO in 2008, and achieved profitability in 2013. Tesla is by far the world’s most valuable automotive company (more valuable than the next 9 companies together), but it is much more than that. Tesla’s latest strategy “Master Plan Part 3” describes how it plans to transform the future of energy.

Growth Champion: Tony’s Chocolonely

Dutch journalist, Teun van de Keuken, founded the chocolate company in 2005 to fight against modern slavery on cocoa farms.  Over 10 years it grew 10x, 24% a year, and a gross margin of 46%, and is the leading chocolate brand in Netherlands. It’s latest “fair” report starts with “Another choc-tastic year, proving that social impact and economic growth can soar together.”

Explore more about growth

More about the Global AMP

The Global Advanced Management Program (Global AMP) is IE Business School’s flagship program for executives stepping up to lead the future of business.

It’s for leaders who are stepping up to become the next CEO, or maybe to join the C-suite, to run a business unit, or getting ready to do so. It’s for leaders who seek to be re-inspired, re-energised ready for an incredible future – to drive business-wide transformation, to reimagine their industry, to change the way their entire business and market works.

It’s for ambitious leaders, game changers, future makers.

If you can see yourself leading your business into the future … if you can start to imagine a business of the future, beyond that currently imagined by your leaders and peers. … then this is for you.

If you are intensely curious, positively dissatisfied, and highly ambitious … and have the courage to take on the next step, not just for you, but for your business too … then this is for you.

Our goal is to create the world’s best program for leaders like you … making sense of today’s incredible, complex and fast-changing world … and how you can have the brains and boldness to create, shape and deliver the future in your own vision.

Each year we take on a small group of 20-30 leaders and work together to help you transform your future. In the last two years, we have brought together some fantastic participants from all over the world, and many different sectors, ready to step up and shape their business, to lead their futures. They have gone on to thrive in their own worlds, and are still part of the Global AMP  community. You can join them.

Step up to lead in a fast-changing future

We live in a world of incredible complexity, enduring uncertainty, and relentless change. That is both challenge and opportunity. Change drives innovation and transformation. New companies emerge, others don’t survive. Disrupt or be disrupted.

Indeed it is no surprise that 57% of companies are founded in a downturn, and most innovations are born out of crisis too. Now, more than ever is the time when business needs leaders with new mindsets, new skills, and who can combine advanced learning with simultaneous business transformation.

Liquid format

To make the Global AMP  even more accessible, practical, and applied to the changing needs of you and your business, we have enhanced the format. It will now take on a much more “liquid” learning structure, so that you can continue to work, and accelerate your leadership development, during these uncertain yet important times. The program will combine online and physical formats over a longer period, enabling you to learn more, apply more, and get more practical value from the experience.

Topical, practical content

The content is entirely updated, anticipating the changing needs of business and its people as we emerge from the recent Covid-19 crisis, and through the next decade – from the megatrends that drive global markets and intelligent technologies, to the convergence of markets and emergence of new business models, new ways of working and the challenges of leading for today, and tomorrow.

We look to the companies who are shaping the world right now – from Alibaba and Aerofarms, to Babylon and Bytedance. We will learn from many different sectors – from the rapidly changing world of healthcare and finance, fashion and retail, manufacturing and technology. How are they being shaped by AI and digital platforms, by 3D printing and ecosystems, emerging markets and new consumer agendas?

Transforming your business, transforming yourself

The program takes on a more dynamic learning style, helping your to explore how to transform yourself and your business, for a world of rapid and continuous change.

We’ve structured the four weeks into a practical yet exciting journey through the world of business –  starting from the future megatrends to today’s growth drivers, exploring a world of disruptive innovations and energising organisations. In the mornings we zig, we explore all the best new ideas business, what matters for business. In the afternoon we zag. We shift venue – to a more relaxed venue – to reflect on the personal leadership challenges. What does it mean for me, my business and our future?

Tranform! business simulation 

The ultimate challenge for any business leader is to put all the ideas, strategies, projects together as a transformational program for the organisation over time.

The business simulation takes the format of an interactive game, playing with other students around the world, physically and online, over three months. It will focus on one particular, dynamic industry and be relevant to what is happening right now in the real world.

If you were the CEO of a leading business in that industry, what would you do? Imagine you are in the world of mobility – Elon Musk has just launched a partnership with Volkswagen, China is massively subsidising rapid adoption, safety regulation is changing, factories can not cope with the growth in demand, media and employees need to be kept on side.

Gamechanger project

In addition to exploring the very latest business ideas and theories, the program is highly personalised in two ways – coaching and project work. The “gamechanger” project is your opportunity to develop your own blueprint for transforming the future of your business, or a new business of your own.

You work one to one with the Academic Director in exploring and defining a new vision which you can take back, share with your business colleagues, and implement over time. It is supported by a Gamechanger Toolkit, and works alongside all modules, applying the learning to your own business, and future potential.

Personal coaching

The one to one leadership coaching program helps you to make sense of your own strengths and style, and coaches work with you to develop this, to respond to the new needs, and to prepare to step up to business leadership. It starts with an in-depth diagnostic of your leadership attitudes and behaviours, and then your coach works with you over time, independent from the rest of the program, as this is specifically about you.

Detailed structure

Phases 1 and 3 will be online, built around a 2-4 hour session each Friday. During these sessions we will bring together the best ideas from around the business world, with expert faculty, and also take you on “deep dives” into what is happening right now in some of the world’s leading businesses.

Phases 2 and 4 will be residential, one week in Segovia, a world heritage site in Spain, and one week in the capital, Madrid. These weeks will also feature leading faculty brought together from around the world, and also enable more time for group networking and collaboration with colleagues who typically come from many different industries and every part of the world. Week 4 concludes with your graduation at IE Business School.

Delivered by some of the world’s top business leaders and thinkers

We bring together the world’s most inspiring and thoughtful faculty, and includes

  • Peter Fisk, academic director of the Global AMP,  bestselling author of Gamechangers, and Business Recoded
  • Jim Hagemann Snabe, chairman of Siemens, author of Dreams and Details, one of the world’s top leaders.
  • Tendayi Viki, a psychologist-based innovator, author of Pirates in the Navy, and partner of Strategyzer
  • Christian Rangen, expert on business transformation, with both corporates and startups, especially in energy
  • Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez , GSK’s top project manager, and author of The Project Revolution
  • Terence Mauri, founder of the Hack Future Lab, former Saatchi and Saatchi planner and McKinsey advisor
  • Mark Fritz, expert in leading change, author of Lead and Influence, having worked on four continents for Kodak
  • Verónica Reyero, human anthropologist exploring a more human future, and founder of Anthropologia 2.0
  • Mikael Trolle, former national coach of Denmark’s Volleyball team, and coach to many business leaders
  • Mark Esposito, technology futurist and AI pioneer, founder of Nexus FrontierTech, and works in UAE
  • Marcos Cajina, founder of Renewal, that focuses on the neuroscience of emotional engagement for leaders
  • Steven MacGregor, author of Chief Wellbeing Officer, founder of the Leadership Academy of Barcelona
  • Conchita Galdon, expert in sustainability strategy and practice, and leader of IE’s think tank in ESG
  • Ricardo Perez, technologist, researcher at MIT, focused on start-ups and emerging digital technologies
  • Jaime Vega, consumer researcher, specialist in understanding fast changing markets and new consumer agendas
  • Javier Bernad, helps leaders to present and perform better, from storytelling to keynotes, vision and action

Global participants

Importantly, the Global AMP brings together a great mix of participants from across sectors and around the world, enhancing your personal network, and learning experience for everyone.

Examples of recent participants include:

  • Finance, Head of Investment Banking, Portugal
  • Technology, Regional Marketing Leader, Egypt
  • Healthcare, Head of Clinical Development, Japan
  • Drinks, Supply Chain Director, Mexico
  • Airlines, Head of Network Development, UAE
  • Technology, Customer Service Director, Mexico
  • Energy, Corporate Strategy Director, Spain
  • Mining, Innovation Director, South Africa
  • Real Estate, Founder and CEO, Portugal
  • Sustainable Investment Fund, CEO, France
  • Healthcare, Senior Medical Advisor, USA
  • Technology, Entrepreneur, Saudi Arabia
  • Manufacturing, CEO and Chairman, Turkey
  • NGO, Founder and Director, Kenya

All participants then join the exclusive Global AMP alumni network, including regular networking and ongoing resources.

Idea Starters

Here are a few tasters of the expert faculty and their big ideas …

Jim Hagemann Snabe … one of the world’s top business leaders, on Dreams and Details:

Exploring the Future

Making sense of change, exploring megatrends and their implications for business, today and tomorrow, and making better choices for your future direction, are all essential to successful leadership. The rise of emerging markets, new technologies and next-generation audiences is accompanied by the increasing scarcity of resources, social fragmentation and climate change. The Fourth Industrial Revolution heralds a new era for business and society, from digitalization and automation to 3D printing, machine learning, artificial intelligence and robotics.

  • Rocket ships: How will you lead the future, shape it in your own vision, and take your business on an uncertain journey towards a better tomorrow?
  • Exponential technologies: Harnessing the potential of new capabilities, from digital and big data to biotech and nanotech as well as AI and robotics.
  • Resource scarcity: Changing sources of energy, the peak of rare metals, high-tech components, patented technologies, talent and creativity.
  • Human impacts: Rethinking work, education and employment, aging and healthcare, urbanization and belonging, wealth and happiness.
  • Future shaping: Making sense of change and making better choices. Harnessing the value drivers and using scenario planning to shape the future you want.

Mark Esposito … the Canadian futurist explores the future as it unfolds:

 

Driving innovative growth

Markets are complex, competitive and dynamic. New markets emerge, and old markets decline, as new audiences, new aspirations and new possibilities drive new growth. Focusing on the best opportunities for growth becomes key to your future, and reimagining how your business can embrace them profitably. Digital markets have no limits, and allow even the smallest businesses to have a huge impact, while accelerating the convergence of sectors and businesses.– so what is your purpose, that will guide you through the future horizons of growth?

  • Growth markets: Exploring the changing the nature of markets. Creating new spaces based on new customers and solutions, driving your growth horizons.
  • Inspiring purpose: Finding your north star, why your business exists, and how putting purpose beyond profit, can transform your activities and success.
  • Customer futures: Understanding the changing aspirations and behaviours of customers, with deeper insight to understand and engage them better.
  • Platform markets: Harnessing the power of digital networks to create new market models that bring buyers and sellers together in new ways, creating new value.
  • Growth accelerators: Consumer data, digital network, and new business models enable you to accelerate every aspect of business, and your future growth.

Tendayi Viki … the psychologist innovator creates the invincible company:

Transforming business faster

Disruption is everywhere, whether it’s a start-up challenging established giants, new technologies replacing inefficient processes, simplicity outperforming complexity or customers challenging businesses to do better. The impact can be dramatic. Reputations can be made and destroyed in a matter of days, while veteran companies are wiped off the map. How can you turn the tables and become the disrupter by developing insights, ideas, innovative strategies and business models that can be delivered quickly and efficiently?

  • Faster innovation: Transforming ideas into new solutions, strategies into action, embracing disruptive change, to reimagine your future business.
  • Creative designs: Harnessing the power of creativity, fused with deep insight, to design better solutions – products and services, experiences and business.
  • Sustainable innovation: Innovating to solve the biggest social and environmental challenges, in a way that is good for the world, and more profitable too.
  • Business Models: Rethinking how organisations work to deliver innovative propositions, leveraging assets and partners to create new ways of working.
  • Invincible companies: Bringing together your innovation portfolio as a source of relentless progress and profitable growth for your business.

Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez  … the world’s top project manager on leading transformation:

Leaders as performers and transformers

Organisations thrive on an inspiring purpose, aligned business model, innovation inside and outside, driving change and high performance. They constantly drive change and transformation, working through projects to create seize new opportunities. People are energised by a positive culture, harnessing the best talents of man and machine, with the agility to continually adapt and respond to changing markets, develop new capabilities and partnerships, and reach new heights. How can you transform, mobilise and energise your organization with a strategy to deliver the best performance today, and create an even better future?

  • Winning strategies: Defining the right direction and priorities, guided by an inspiring purpose, and harnessing the drivers of value.
  • Driving change: Making better, more strategic decisions every day, turning strategy into implementation, while using the right metrics and rewards, to drive transformation and performance.
  • Fast and agile: Shaping organisations and processes to be agile and efficient, leveraging strengths and addressing weaknesses both internally and externally.
  • Energising people: Mobilising employees to think and deliver strategy innovatively and profitably, unlocking the power of teams and humanity in a positive culture.
  • Sustaining impact: Ensuring that the organisation has the capacity to renew and adapt to deliver shared value in the short and long term.

Verónica Reyero … the modern anthropologist, exploring better human futures:

Creating a better future

The best leaders amplify the potential of their teams and their business. By developing an effective leadership style, they can inspire, engage, connect and support to drive long-term direction and meet short-term goals. Leaders of the future will drive change in a way that unlocks talent and performance, constantly reinventing organisations. How will you lead yourself, your team and your business towards a better future, one that combines purpose with passion, profit and progress? This module is interspersed across the whole program, in order to connect with the many different business topics.

  • Great leaders: Business are obsessed with leadership, but how do leaders really add value, engage people effectively and deliver better results?
  • Authentic organizations: From corporate to personal reputations, how do you build trust and authenticity inside and outside the business?
  • Talent beacons: How to attract, engage and retain the best people in an ideas-driven world – to nurture, motivate, and inspire them to create the future.
  • High performance: Improving your personal and business wellbeing to drive high performance, physically and mentally, agile and resilient, with a winning mindset.
  • Leadership style: Why should you be the leader? What do you have that will take your company further? And why will anyone want to be led by you?

Chris Rangen … Leading transformation:

Terence Mauri … being a courageous leader:

Steven MacGregor … well-being habits for leaders to start every day:

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