Ready to Drive Your Business S-Curve?
All businesses, even the most successful, face inflection points in growth where existing momentum stagnates or, in some cases, may even start to decline. While the prospect of slowdown is daunting, growth-driven high performers are primed for these pivotal moments.
High performers guide their existing core business with an eye toward market evolution and insights from consumer demand. Doing so requires two underlying competencies that are built into the foundation of their vision and decision-making. First, these companies balance current business operations and needs with the longer-term strategic and economic potential of next-phase business opportunities. And second, they sustain critical decision velocity to jump successfully from maturity at one stage to growth in the next.
Steering the Path of an S-Curve
In technology innovation, the predictable cycle of business growth and maturity is represented as an S-curve, a mathematical model also known as a logistic curve. Based on the sigmoid function, the application of the model is not exclusive to business. A number of natural systems, such as complex learning curves, the blooming of yeast, or the development of world economies, experience a progression over time from modest formation to accelerated growth that reaches an apogee and finally declining returns as growth tails off.
In business, an S-curve is marked by three distinct phases:
[1] Initial sales of a successful new product build steadily as early adopters or niche markets drive inceptive momentum or investment in the company.
[2] Rapid rise in sales with increased consumer awareness of the product and its market, successful market penetration, and product adoption.
[3] Start of decline where sales taper due to market saturation, as competitors infiltrate the market, or with increasing operational costs to continue supporting the offering.
Continually Navigating Next-Level Growth
The challenge with business growth is not that existing products reach peak utilization in their lifecycles. The real test for any business is maintaining impeccable timing, exemplary execution, and sustainable velocity by continually anticipating and evaluating the market and next-level growth opportunities. Simply investing more in existing products, in services, or in current operations is rarely enough to maintain a stronghold. In their book, Stall Points, authors Matthew Olson and Derek van Bever explain that once a company experiences crucial obstacles in growth it has less than a 10 percent chance of fully recovering from the decline. Greater than two-thirds of stalled companies , the authors add, “disappear the radar entirely” and are taken private, face acquisition, or are forced into bankruptcy.
Strategically Planning Growth
Near term impactful growth is only a first step in building a business and brand. Thriving in the longterm by harnessing successive strategic inflection points enables businesses to face fluctuating markets and competitive pressures and to balance an existing portfolio with innovation. Our team applies an opportunity assessment framework to identify and logically lay out growth options. Our approach begins with a few questions for you that are key to the analysis.
- Where does your business sit on its current S-curve?
- What are next-phase business opportunities and how does each option weigh against the other?
- Are competitors defining the market is specific ways and is this the time to differentiate?
The results of this analysis can be game changing, and our team is here to help. We'd love to answer questions and help chart the course with you.