We work across industries on a broad range of business opportunities and challenges subject to a unifying focus on growth and innovation.

Each project we undertake is a bespoke exercise that is customised to the challenge at hand. We do not descend on our clients with a horde of young MBA’s primed with a rigid kit of tools, products, techniques and processes. We prefer to think things through from first principles using a handful of seasoned professionals to guide the process. They round out the deliberations with judgement and pattern recognition skills developed over years of practical experience in addition to sophisticated analytics and conceptual frameworks.

Our approach is team-based and widely participative. We consciously seek to broaden the "problem solving gene pool" by bringing together people from different backgrounds to integrate the disciplines needed to drive a growth and innovation agenda. We often advocate a client-led "task force" strengthened by substantial inputs from thinkGROWTH and our network of affiliated experts. At the end of one of our assignments, the client has not only seen the power of our approach, they have participated in it and are able to repeat the process.

Innovation is something “new and different” that has market impact. Growth requires drive to translate fresh ideas into viable solutions for real world problems. If growth-and-innovation is to proceed, there must be an alignment between "creativity" and "impact". This implies:

• Leadership to set the goals and boundaries; decide the funding and resource allocation; shape the corporate culture; and set an example for the broader organisation
• Systems and processes to carry out effective research; develop new insights; generate and screen new ideas; and launch new initiatives

We work with clients to help them get traction on these challenges and to provide the benefit of an external perspective. While the actual process is typically messy, iterative and non linear, it is helpful to think of it in terms of a series of more or less self contained modules:

• We start with a process of immersion and discovery. Here we assemble a fact base to understand the key issues and develop new insights. This typically involves gathering intelligence; generating a deeper understanding of the customer and commercial imperatives; seeing how growth and innovation fits with the overall strategy; and developing a set of working hypotheses for catalysing new ideas
• Next we embark on a disciplined process of idea generation aimed at generating a portfolio of concepts; commercially plausible propositions; and growth themes (which can then be screened, tested, refined and validated).
• We then engage in an iterative process of synthesis, planning, and implementation to build momentum and discipline in the growth agenda. Typically this involves:
  
  
  • Prioritising a plausible set of ideas (according to the size of the prize; implementation risk and difficulty; level of investment; and lead times before any payoff)
  • Classifying and then balancing the portfolio of growth and innovation initiatives
  • Securing resource allocations and developing an implementation work plan to “make things happen”

At each stage of the process we look at the problem from three perspectives (strategic imperatives; insights and opportunities; and organisational impediments). This overlay gives us a framework which can be summarised as follows:

The outcome from our involvement is typically two-fold:

• A pipeline of market ready concepts that have run the gauntlet of consumer, technical and commercial interrogation; where the go- to-market challenges have been resolved; and where the related business model implications have been thought through.
• A balanced portfolio of initiatives ranging from “rounding out” the status quo with conventional projects (that have been subject to standard ROI or EVA calculations) to “disciplined experiments” (do-learn-do) within a clearly defined framework of exposure limits, timeframes and milestones.