Winners in the Growth Race

Research for this book has been rigorous and far reaching. In Darwinian mode, I have collected specimen companies and analyzed their successes, pinpointing the methods by which they unarguably beat their competitors. I began with the premise that any company growing by more than 15 percent a year for the past three or more years had to be pursuing a notable strategy.

The facts were even more stunning: My colleagues and I actually spotted a few businesses growing at phenomenal rates of more than 5,000 percent a year. This exercise yielded a total of 1,000 high-velocity businesses with growth rates above 15 percent, enough to keep us toiling for the next 20 years. We began winnowing this down to a more manageable number and conducting extensive personal interviews with company leaders. It turned out that some of the candidates with exceptional growth rates weren’t being driven by their strategies; they were just lucky, or riding a trend. The finalists were a fascinating lot, creative companies with unusual strategies that, as noted in the Introduction, combined an irresistible promise to customers with an enviable record for delivering it.