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Growth and Competitive Strategy
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Sara Johnson owns a pet store. She started this small business out of a passion for helping people
take care of their pets. The store is off to a good start, but she really worries about how she will grow
the business. The competitive environment that surrounds her store is challenging, with the big-box
stores having full-blown pet departments, specialty stores improving, and Web-based operations
providing access to low-priced supplies. In addition, customer needs seem to change over time.
In contrast, Ken Smith is a brand manager for a $900 million division of a major consumer products
company. Ken worries about the exact same things as Sara, just on a different scope and scale. He
has customers who have supported 8% growth of his product lines in each of the last 2 years. His
challenge, though, is how to maintain that growth rate (representing $72 million in sales) in markets
where competitive imitation over time has led the products to become very similar and competitive
advantage more difficult to come by.
The context and magnitude of these problems are quite different, but, at the root, they are the same.
Whether you are Sara or Ken, the general manager of an insurance company seeking to increase
policies sold, a United Way director seeking to increase donations, or a human resource director
wishing to increase business with internal staff in their hiring decisions, your question is, how do we
successfully position against the competition and grow our business? While a complex matter, the
task of building growth strategy has some simple foundational ideas