Three Strategies for Managing Fast Growth Case Solution And Analysis, HBR Case Study Solution & Analysis of Harvard Case Studies

To grow steadily and avoid stagnation, companies must learn how to build and expand its business, lengthen its expansion phase and to accumulate and apply new knowledge into products and markets faster than competitors. Managers can not leave growth to chance. They need a plan that has a stable sales growth in the long term - one that captures the vision and leadership for the expansion aims to improve the product and market combinations the company intends to carry out, he hopes to reach the size of a particular period of time and know-how and organizational structures are needed. Three prosperous companies demonstrate three different strategies in action. Netscape experience shows how a company can scale up - to do more of what it already does well. Netscape went from $ 80 million in sales in 1995 to $ 500 million in just three years later. IKEA to use overlapping, repeating business model in new regions. According to the authors, the success of IKEA, is related to the way it manages and transmits knowledge. Growth strategy is an example of SAP granulation - growing select business units. SAP began with the basic enterprise resource planning system, and then moved to a multi-product e-commerce and Internet activities. The use of one product as a platform, it has become allows customers to customize virtually any ERP system. The authors emphasize the importance of combining growth strategies with a clear strategy for training. Companies must decide what growth strategy, they want to do, given their capabilities and market opportunities. Then they have to make the strategy work, changing their structure and processes in a way that allows them to acquire or create special knowledge about new technologies, customers and industries. "Hide
by Georg von Krogh, Michael A. Cusumano Source: MIT Sloan Management Review 11 pages. Publication Date: December 1, 2001. Prod. #: SMR059-PDF-ENG