Escaping the Growth Curse: The Path to Stronger Corporate Strategy

Sustainable company growth isn’t just a pipedream. This 3-part blueprint is your guide to avoiding the traps that cause growth to stall.

As companies mature, their underlying growth naturally slows—this is called the ‘growth curse’. It’s a pervasive problem that plagues companies, CEOs, and board members alike. In order to safeguard a company’s future, a strategic form of governance in which the board plays a more active role on behalf of all stakeholders, must be activated.

This book is comprised of 3 parts. First it shows companies how to identify the traditional traps that hinder growth. The second part provides companies with a blueprint for building their board, defining long-term strategy, and adjustments necessary to serve continued growth. The final part delves into the specific ways that the board and executives must collaborate in relation to strategic renewal.

Reimagining the limits of growth and how companies are run as a consequence provides an escape from the ‘growth curse’ at last.

Yves Doz is the INSEAD Solvay Chaired Professor in the management of technological innovation and the Academic Committee at CEDEP. He has worked with many global corporations such as Airbus, Avery Dennison, GSK, IBM, Intel, Microsoft, Nokia, P&G, Teva, Timken, Toyota and Xerox. His work with the public sector recently included advising Finnish Parliament institute, SITRA, on developing strategically agile national governments and he teaches in a leadership development program for senior civil servants in Finland.

Keeley Wilson is Senior Researcher at INSEAD. Her work for the past 20 years in both research and consulting has focused on global innovation strategies, management processes, strategic alliances, and leadership challenges at a wide range of companies including HP, Novartis, Shell, Siemens, Reuters, Schneider, and Xerox.