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

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.