This session covers the first of the what building blocks. Its objectives are to review the IRG Growth Study findings on abundant markets, understand the possible routes to abundance and market expansion, and explore what a wider definition of your own market would mean.
The finding it rests on is that overperformers think far more expansively about the markets they operate in, and that a more needs-based view of the market opens new opportunities for partnerships, solutions and growth.
Key findings
- The session’s first key learning is that creating abundance is about growing the size of the pie, not just the size of your slice.
- The second is that abundance comes from watching, thinking and working differently than others.
- The third is that abundance does not have to mean more, but it does have to deliver value to colleagues, customers, communities and the capital markets.
- Six routes to abundance are named: innovate from the core, enter adjacent categories, expand the target group, add services and experiences, consider human needs, and ladder up.
- All six depend on the same underlying capability: insight into human psychology and behavior, extended to every stakeholder rather than only to buyers.
What has to be true inside the organization
The session is blunt that it starts and ends with deep human understanding. You can be the best innovator in the world, but without an unmet need there is no growth. Nor can you enter any adjacent category you like: consumers have to be convinced of the fit according to their reasoning, not yours.
The growth leader’s task is defined as decoding the world and feeding the company with insights and opportunities to create more value for all stakeholders. The enablers listed alongside are connecting with consumers, new tools in social listening and social watching, new people keeping a finger on the pulse, and new behaviors embracing risk and experimentation.
Four companies that grew by offering less
McDonald’s is the colleague example. Rather than claiming to be the world’s best lifetime employer, it states an ambition to be the world’s best first employer. Instead of retaining staff as long as possible, which would be the efficient path, it encourages them to develop, offers routes to a college degree, and stimulates them to move on.
Credit Karma is the customer example. It built growth by serving the customers the industry overlooks, developing services for the least valuable financial consumer, many of whom are not financially literate and struggle with the small print. Its intuitive interface became popular enough to attract the most valuable consumers too, and it has over 85 million members.
Patagonia is the community example, helping both community and environment by selling fewer clothes. Its worn wear team travels to concerts and outdoor events in vans to repair clothing, and it sells recrafted and secondhand Patagonia items as an alternative to buying new. It discourages buying and still creates growth and value.
Patek Philippe is the capital markets example, and the mechanism is simply supply and demand. It produces only 58,000 pieces a year, a fraction of what it could sell, and many of its models are worth three times the store price as a result. The session calls this maintaining the scarcity effect: fewer watches, more value.
What participants are asked to do
The exercise asks where the participant’s organization is leading and lagging on abundant markets, and what is blocking success. The reflection asks for concrete actions with a named who, what and by when.
The preparation material sets up the same argument from three directions: Rory Sutherland on profiting from irrationality, a Lego case on using anthropologists to deepen consumer understanding, and the Red Ocean Traps article on the mental models that block a market-creating mentality.
Scope and limitations
This is one session from an online learning program rather than a research report. The company examples are illustrative, and the study findings behind them are summarized rather than presented with their underlying data.
Source
This page summarises SESSION 5: Abundant Markets, by Eva Linderborg, 2024.