Profit or Growth?: Why You Don't Have to Choose

“The simultaneous pursuit of growth and profitability is one of the most exquisite–and difficult–leadership dilemmas. Bala Chakravarthy and Peter Lorange provide penetrating insights and persuasive real-life examples on how a company can address this dilemma through continuous renewal and internal entrepreneurship. Unusual for books on leadership, their discussion spans from theory through practical implementation.”

–Nick Shreiber, Former President & CEO, Tetra Pak Group

“A continuous renewal of the firm’s businesses is essential for driving its profitable growth. This book gives credible insights and rich examples on how these renewal strategies can be shaped and executed successfully. I am recommending it to my key managers and business friends–essential reading!”

–Peter Brabeck-Letmathe, Chairman & CEO, Nestlé

Drawing on extensive research with world-class companies, this book introduces four proven strategies for continuous renewal. You’ll discover powerful ways to protect and extend your core businesses; capture new opportunities distant from them; and “bridge” these two strategies with two others to evolve towards profitable diversification.

Then, through real-world case studies from great companies around the world, you’ll learn how to execute on these strategies–achieving superior growth and profitability in any business environment.

•Craft a “shared strategic architecture” for growth and profitability

Protect, extend, transform, build, and leverage

•Execute on your renewal strategies successfully

Integrate your efforts, encourage entrepreneurship, and manage risks

•Wield the tools of implementation

Utilize organic growth, acquisitions, and alliances more effectively

•Share one stage and one script

Find the right roles for leaders, managers, and internal entrepreneurs

•Promote continuous renewal from the top

Set vision, values, and culture...and manage the dilemmas of continuous renewal

Sustaining Growth and Profitability: World-Class Strategies, Proven Execution Techniques!

•Mastering the secret of growth and profitability: continuous renewal

•Emerging best practices from today’s most successful companies, worldwide

•Protecting, extending, leveraging, building, and transforming your core

•Deploying organic growth, acquisitions, and alliances intelligently

Growth and profitability. You need both. This book shows how to get both. It combines a complete strategic framework with start-to-finish execution techniques–all based on advanced research reflecting the best practices of today’s most successful companies. Through detailed case studies, the authors show how to sustain growth and profitability by protecting and extending your current market position, evolving to adjacent areas, and entering entirely new markets. You’ll discover better ways to integrate organic growth, acquisitions and alliances; task managers at all levels in the organization appropriately; and manage the non-stop dilemmas and tradeoffs you’ll face along the way.

Dr. Bala Chakravarthy is Professor of Strategy and International Management at IMD, where he holds the Shell Chair in Sustainable Business Growth. His areas of expertise include strategy process, corporate entrepreneurship, and managing organic growth. He has served on the Board of the Strategic Management Society, and is an Inaugural Fellow of that society.

Dr. Peter Lorange is President of IMD and Nestlé Professor of International Business. His areas of expertise include strategy process, joint ventures, and international strategy. He serves as a board member for several corporations, and is an Inaugural Fellow of the Strategic Management Society.