Opportunity-based growth management: enabling a company-wide effort to proactively take advantage of new business prospects

Abstract

Purpose

The growth imperative dominating in today’s market economy implies that shareholder value creation can happen only through constant, profitable growth of the business. The article offers a process for increasing the effectiveness of a firm’s strategy by improving the quality and number of growth opportunities it enables managers to take advantage of.

Design/methodology/approach

To address the problem of bridging the strategizing process with emerging opportunity landscapes, the current paper offers a practical approach for establishing opportunity-based growth management (OGM) system, comprising six basic components: Understanding, Scanning, Articulating, Testing, Choosing, and Organizing.

Findings

The presented approach allows the management to notice and exploit the emerging market opportunities before competitors, to leverage the full information available within the company (particularly among front-line employees), and to assess the current company’s business model and make the necessary adjustments.

Practical implications

A case study of the process in action is presented.

Originality/value

The proposed OGM framework enables higher-level linking of the “strategy-as-learning” with “strategy-as-planning” paradigms.

Citation

Biloshapka, V. and Osiyevskyy, O. (2019), "Opportunity-based growth management: enabling a company-wide effort to proactively take advantage of new business prospects", Strategy & Leadership, Vol. 47 No. 3, pp. 11-18. https://doi.org/10.1108/SL-02-2019-0029