Three core truths most growth strategies overlook: Mature firms dominate. Old firms saturate. Young firms disrupt. If you’re hoping for more than incremental growth, you need to be clear on what part of this lifecycle your firm and your marketplace are in.

Take retail as an example. The most common growth strategy you’ll hear? Open more stores. Great for a mature firm that has its offering and operations dialed in—often, not much more is required.

But eventually even the best tacticians run out of geography. Or their relevance slips behind the times.

If they don’t realize they’re running out of strategic runway, they start saturating. They develop new, smaller footprint urban stores. They invest in omnichannel, imagining meaningful online sales. Some hope to find open territory for more stores by entering a whole new market.

If they don’t realize they’re running out of strategic runway, they start saturating.

These approaches generally involve the same offering, the same experience: the same core strategy, with minor tweaks. And that leads to disproportionate risk and investment for the same incremental results.

This basic pattern is common across sectors. It’s what you get when you bolt more of the same onto the same old, if trusty, chariot.

There’s a much better opportunity for a mature business that’s growing old—or even just a mature product. It’s the opportunity to define and lead a whole new era of growth.

If you distill the fundamental customer need that you uniquely serve, you’ll almost always find that it demands a much bigger marketplace than today’s to satisfy it, and a much bigger firm to lead it.

That’s strategic renewal: the opportunity to grow like you’re young again. Here’s a case study with more details.

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Is it your firm’s time for strategic renewal? Our relevance and renewal workshop can identify new strategies for growing your customer, marketplace and firm.

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