It is obviously critical to understand both these things. The HMV story has been told many times before, but they clearly failed to recognise the opportunity (and threat) that online sales and downloads represented, or perhaps they recognised that new market entrants like Amazon and Apple were the barriers and knew that the fight was lost?
The opportunities for growth might be things that you’ve never previously considered, or perhaps just more of the same. They might include new markets, new business models, new routes to market, or perhaps partnerships or alliances.
Dell went back into private ownership in order to deliver their growth strategy, and then saw the opportunity to buy EMC / VMware.
In the UK, Computacenter recognised that services was the opportunity for growth, and transformed themselves from a ‘box shifter’ to a services business in order to thrive and survive.
The barriers to growth are likely to be forever changing, driven by factors outside your control, such as the economy, legislation, new market entrants, new commercial models, or market disruptors.
Whatever the barriers or threats to growth are, it’s essential to tackle them head on, not duck them like HMV did.
When working with companies to facilitate the development of a growth strategy, the very first thing we do with them is help them identify, agree and quantify both the opportunities and barriers, using the outputs to shape the rest of the strategy.
The next blog in this series looks at the second dimension of a successful growth strategy – Understanding and communicating your business value.