This is the full source version of the IRG Growth Study, dated December 2020. It opens on the growth challenge: traditional business growth formulas are lacking, barriers to entry are disappearing, new players are breaking the rules, and even disruptors are being disrupted.
The study answers with seven building blocks, each introduced by a myth it contradicts, each supported by paired figures for overperformers and underperformers, and each closing with three actions a leader can take.
Key findings
- The evidence base is more than 750 vision interviews and more than 5,000 survey respondents across 73 markets, plus an AI meta-analysis of published work on business growth and LinkedIn data from over 800 million connections across three million employees.
- Overperformer and underperformer status is defined against actual revenue growth rather than self-report, and the methodology page shows self-reported growth plotted against actual growth.
- The widest capability gap in the study is market reading: 86 percent of overperformers assess and understand market developments against 36 percent.
- Training separates the two groups. Overperformers give more training time per employee per year, measured against a scale from no formal training to more than three days.
- On ambition, top-line revenue indexes 93 and 98 and separates nobody, bottom-line indexes 130 against 85, and impact on people indexes 120 against 76.
Why the study exists
The pressures listed are commercial and social at once. Markets are reaching maturity and growth is harder to maintain in a period the study calls slowbalization. Stakeholders are pushing back, there is a war for talent, corporate culture is transparent, and the license to operate is being challenged.
The competitive backdrop is every partner jockeying to own the consumer, open questions about what to take in-house, concerns about trust and fake news, and the platform giants. The framing question is whether growth is fueled by value extraction or value creation, and the consequence for the marketer is stated flatly: when growth is lacking, the CMO is typically the first to go.
Growth is described as available, but in uncomfortable places: with new partners, with niche brands, and through direct-to-consumer routes taken by big players and small ones alike. What was missing, the study argues, was a new growth architecture.
Markets, models and experiences
On abundant markets, the counter-evidence to the market share myth is that underperformers focus more on their slice of the pie, at 55 percent against 44, while 56 percent of overperformers look at category growth and beyond. Overperformers also make bets and hold them: 63 percent against 29 on long-term growth focus, and 72 percent against 38 on consistency with big bets.
The actions attached to it are unusually specific. Shift investment from explaining the past to predicting the future. Define your market so you have no more than 3 percent share. Define growth platforms that guide everything the business does, and stop everything else.
On multiple models, 71 percent of overperformers are willing to accept new business models against 39 percent, expanding across verticals, channels, segments and cultures, whether through home-grown skunk works or acquisition. The study’s conclusion for the function is that marketers need to boost financial literacy, and the actions include allowing multiple business models in the investment approval process and running a finance-for-marketers training program.
On evolving experiences, 81 percent focus on eliminating friction and delivering ever-evolving experiences against 32 percent. The actions are to measure and benchmark share of experience, make sure every solution has product, service and experience components, and drive optimization and innovation together rather than choosing between them.
Culture, organization and data
Open culture shows up in external connectivity, at 67 percent against 39, and in diversity in strategic decision making, at 70 percent against 45. The culture indices point the same way, with procedures, structure and quality indexing 133 for underperformers against 83, and innovation, change and entrepreneurship indexing 133 for overperformers.
The actions for culture are structural rather than motivational: redefine career paths from a linear trajectory to a jungle gym, celebrate and reward intrapreneurship, and make sure the senior decision making team is genuinely diverse.
The anticipative organization is measured on agility at 68 percent against 16, on removing internal barriers at 50 against 24, on internal connectivity at 67 against 35, and on marketing and sales collaboration for e-commerce at 68 against 37. Overperformers hold 3.5 times more connections with other functions and 5.5 times more with senior leaders. Haier appears as the flat organization built from small competitive teams with empowered mini-chief-executives.
Its actions push authority downward: push accountability to consumer-facing staff, enhance responsibility matrices with guiding principles rather than replacing them, and create multi-disciplinary fit-for-purpose teams for every strategic initiative.
Whole-brained working answers the myth that the problem is a shortage of data. Sixty-five percent can attract whole-brain talent against 25 percent, 66 percent put data and analytics at the core of strategic decision making against 36, and 59 percent develop creative solutions inspired by the data against 20. The actions are to build whole-brain teams of equals, integrate sources into one version of the truth accessible to all, and shift focus from the what to the so what and the now what.
Humanized growth and the leader
The seventh block answers the myth that the objective is profitable growth. Everyone focuses on the top line, so it separates nobody. Underperformers weight the bottom line, overperformers weight impact on the people they serve. Haidilao appears as the company obsessed with colleagues, consumers and communities, and Cisco as the move from a product focus to the People Deal.
Its actions are about measurement and language: link business growth to people growth KPIs and incentive structures, make all growth objectives equally important, and articulate ambition in terms of impact on people and the world around them.
The leadership section pairs each building block with a characteristic: humble, empowering, passionate and courageous. It argues the role must go beyond communication and beyond shiny distracting digital toys, toward making better marketing decisions and influencing better business decisions, and traces one CMO journey from CMO to chief growth officer to chief executive.
The closing update is the COVID one. Before the pandemic, stakeholder emphasis sat on customers and the capital markets; at the outbreak, colleagues and community joined them. IRG’s 2020 CMO survey reports 78 percent against 4 percent seeing a significant shift to humanized growth, and 65 percent against 11 percent reporting increased CMO influence on growth.
Scope and limitations
The comparisons throughout are between overperformers and underperformers as the study defines them, across more than 750 vision interviews and more than 5,000 survey respondents in 73 markets. The respondent base skews toward marketing, at 46 percent of functions.
Source
This page summarises IRG Growth Study, by Institute for Real Growth, December 2020.