Escaping the Growth Curse

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.“This is not a standard management book but a must-read for nonexecutive directors, CEOs, and anyone involved in strategy. If you take the book's lessons to heart you will make fewer mistakes."
—Jeroen van der Veer, former CEO, Shell, and former Chairman, Phillips and ING
 
“This immensely thoughtful book drives home the challenges awaiting corporate boards that stay detached from their companies’ strategy-making. Doz and Wilson, who build their arguments around the now-ubiquitous ‘growth curse’ problem confronting public companies, offer tangible suggestions for how boards and individual directors can step up their game as business strategists.”
—Donald C. Hambrick, Evan Pugh University Professor and Smeal Chaired Professor of Management, Smeal College of Business, The Pennsylvania State University
 
“A must-read for anyone interested in the interplay between boards and top management and the wicked challenge of sustaining growth. Laced with pertinent examples from their advisory experience, Doz and Wilson show how Boards can play a critical role in helping firms shift from operational bottom-line efficiency to a strategic growth mindset and provide practical tools and guidance for doing so.”
—Philippe Haspeslagh, Professor and Honorary Dean, Vlerick Business School, and cofounder and former Chairman, Dujardin FoodsYves 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.Recipients of the George R. Terry Book Award