Successful growth stems from matching your strengths and weaknesses with the opportunities that exist in your business environment. Your growth strategy is the way in which you position your company to exploit your strengths and opportunities and mitigate your weaknesses and threats. By strategizing how to grow, you’re actively deciding how to connect your mission with your vision. Your growth strategy answers the question, “How do we get there?”
Keep these key points on growth in mind as you move through this chapter:
Growth begins with your customers in mind.
Growth focuses on opportunities.
Growth looks forward by learning from the past.
Everyone can grow.
Growth comes from either leveraging your market knowledge or leveraging your product knowledge. The figure illustrates how you can leverage your market and/or product knowledge to create four different strategies, originally presented by Igor Ansoff in 1957, which still has practical business application today:
Market penetration
Product development
Market development
Diversification
