The GR5 Growth Strategy Playbook (GR5 Playbook) is Legacy Innovation Group's proprietary model set for pursuing – and achieving – responsive and resilient business growth.
We created the GR5 Playbook recognizing that businesses need not only new ways of growing, but ultimately new ways of doing so that allow them to be more responsive to rapidly shifting markets and more resilient to long term changes. Given a business environment characterized by rapidly changing circumstances, this is the foremost business challenge of the world we live in today.
The underlying philosophy of GR5 is that in order to thrive over the long run, your business must be resilient to the changes happening in the world around it. This means that what you offer, how you offer it, to whom you offer it, and where you offer it – all must remain relevant to each successive generation of your markets. This in turn requires that your business be responsive to rapidly shifting market dynamics so that it can constantly renew itself and – when needed – reinvent itself. By so doing, it continues to justify its existence in the marketplace.
The GR5 Playbook encompasses those things that can be done to stretch the business' current foundations of value – known as Value Capture, as well as those things that can be done to build entirely new foundations of value for sustained growth and relevance – known as Value Creation. The latter represent the sort of quantum innovations that yield growth at a strategically significant scale and that foster the long term resilience of the business.
The GR5 philosophy further embraces the concept of responsive (or agile) growth. Responsive growth holds that while an underlying sense of corporate identity and an overarching strategic direction must exist, there can be no reliance on rigid strategic planning, as markets, technologies, and the world at large are simply changing too fast. Instead, inside of its broader business strategy, your company must allow the headroom needed to frequently fine tune individual strategies in proper response to market shifts. By doing this, your overarching strategy – and your vision – can deliver the results needed to ensure your long term growth.
The name "GR5" thus reflects the idea of "Growth" through "Responsiveness", "Relevance", "Resilience", "Renewal", and "Reinvention". As previously suggested, there is a clear relationship between these five behaviors... being perpetually responsive in each short term window – renewing and reinventing where needed – ensures being steadily resilient over the long term, as the basis of your value proposition continues to remain relevant to each successive generation of the market.
The GR5 Growth Strategy Playbook consists of two main models — the GR5 Growth Strategy Compass and the GR5 Growth Strategy Roadmap.
The first of these – the GR5 Compass – allows a business to thoughtfully consider where they need to go with strategic innovation... what major innovation strategies and initiatives they need to pursue in order to achieve their broader corporate objectives.
The second of these – the GR5 Roadmap – allows a business to then consider how they will pursue these strategies and initiatives.
Used together, these two models allow a business to decide not only where it is going, but how it is going to get there.
The GR5 Growth Strategy Compass — shown in the matrix below — reflects the different types of growth strategies a business can pursue – known as the Growth Pathways – the different types of innovation associated with each strategy, and the degrees of novelty associated with each strategy for the target market, the offering, and the business model. These strategies are referred to as "pathways" because they connect businesses from where they are today ("point A") to where they want to be tomorrow ("Point B").
The Growth Pathways therefore represent the "hunting grounds" the business will pursue. They address the questions of "where to hunt", "what to hunt", and in some ways "what tools to hunt with".
Inherent in these decisions – for each play to be made – will be the degree of novelty involved. As shown, there will be a degree of novelty associated with the targeted market (existing, adjacent, new-to-company, or new-to-world), a degree of novelty associated with the intended offering and its technologies (existing, modified, new-to-company, or new-to-world), and a degree of novelty associated with the business model to be used (existing, modified, or new). The business may leverage any mix of these in order to arrive at a specific strategic play, depending on how far it intends to stretch itself in any given direction, with none of the plays being mutually exclusive of the others.
The GR5 Compass defines six specific pathways of growth. The first three of these have a Value Capture focus – stretching the current foundations of value (the current S-curves). The latter three have a Value Creation focus – building new foundations of value (new S-curves). Each of these pathways prescribes a specific mix of market, offering, and business model novelties that are characteristically used together.
Using the GR5 Compass and the thought process it evokes allows a business to think more clearly through exactly which growth strategies it wishes to pursue, and in each case, what sort of effort will be required of the organization in order to succeed. This allows a business to optimally select strategies that are in alignment with its broader corporate objectives and which its organization is capable of delivering on, thus ensuring a greater likelihood of overall success.
The GR5 Growth Strategy Roadmap — shown in the matrix below — is made up of two parts — the Growth Pathways and the Growth Vehicles. Both are rooted in strategic innovation.
The GR5 Roadmap reflects the same six Growth Pathways as are seen in the GR5 Compass.
The Growth Vehicles deal with the portfolio of vehicles used to drive new growth — the so–called "innovation factory". They address the question of how the business will create and deliver new value to the marketplace.
The GR5 Roadmap identifies four vehicles that businesses can leverage to create and deliver new value to the marketplace. The first is purely organic, while the second is "extended organic", and the last two are inorganic.
The nature of the GR5 Roadmap is that it is a pairing matrix, and as such illustrates how that particular vehicles can best be leveraged to pursue particular pathways.
None of these pathways or vehicles should be thought of as being mutually exclusive. The aim in all cases is to maintain a portfolio of active pathways so that short term, medium term, and long term growth initiatives are in play at all times. Thus, at any given time, a business can – and should – leverage as many of these pathways and vehicles as are needed, with the only consideration being its ability to manage its overall portfolio. This is also where a mature and robust Corporate Innovation program can prove highly effective.
From a portfolio mix standpoint, each company will need to establish its preferred portfolio mix according to the character of its industry, the speed of its markets, its level of innovation maturity, and its own particular business strategy and goals.
Many successful and highly–innovative companies strive for something along the lines of a 70 / 20 / 10 portfolio mix, where:
This means that, overall, 70% of projects will be focused on Value Capture and 30% will be focused on new Value Creation. We call this the 70 / 20 / 10 Rule of Resilience. Our experience has been that this is a reasonably good mix for most companies in most situations. Why? Because it allows the company to fund tomorrow's growth investments by monetizing today's foundations of value, and tends to result in a good overall cadence of short, medium, and long term growth steps. There are exceptions of course, usually for good reasons, but this mix is a good starting point in most situations.
Companies must be vigilant to remain on the lookout across their horizons, scanning for major structural changes in their markets and industries. Whenever they see these coming, they will need to go on the offensive and shift their efforts, resources, and this portfolio accordingly... carefully managing and leveraging a current foundation of value in order to generate the revenue needed to finance the (often accelerated) building of a new and more relevant line of business based on a new foundation of value.
Depending on the "suddenness" and "sharpness" of this "bend in the road", this may require abandoning the current portfolio altogether and undertaking a radical makeover of the entire business, particularly where emerging capabilities make feasible a radical new business model that was never seen before (see the Future Lens Business Model Innovation Framework for more on this). In many cases, established players in the market will struggle to compete with new upstarts, particularly where new digital capabilities are involved. This is why staying ahead of your markets and being the leader in new S–curve generation can prove so critically important over time.
The GR5 Growth Strategy Playbook is a large and comprehensive model.
If you are interested in studying the model set in its full detail, you may do so here... The GR5 Playbook In Detail — 7 Pathways & 4 Vehicles.
These are the pathways and vehicles for innovation–driven growth.
At Legacy Innovation Group, we work with business leaders to help them determine which of these will be most optimal for their business, given its current growth and innovation objectives and its existing capabilities. Given that each pathway – as we progress from 1 to 6 – and each vehicle – progressing from 1 to 4 – requires an increasingly higher level of innovation maturity and capability, we also work with organizations to help them develop these as well.
In addition, if a company is to leverage this model and its growth strategies most effectively to drive its future growth, then it must ultimately become the type of organization that embraces uncertainty and that lives, breathes, and sleeps real innovation day–in and day–out. This means it will need to rethink its broader culture, strategies, processes, and workplaces so as to become an engaging market leader. We have the tools and know–how to help organizations do precisely that.
The GR5 Playbook provides the basis for our consulting work in Innovation Strategy. To learn more, please see our Innovation Strategy Consulting page, or to engage us in this capacity, refer to our Management Practice Engagement page.
The GR5 Playbook also provides the basis for our Innovation Strategy training course. To learn more, please see our Innovation Strategy Course page, or to engage us in this capacity, refer to our Training Engagement page.
CEOs come and CEOs go. Some are excellent. They generally ‘get it’. Others not so much. They really ‘don't get it’. What makes the difference between these?
READ MORE
There's an insidious debate that's bounced around for probably the better part of twenty years now. It's the debate of whether or not ‘innovation is everyone's job’...
READ MORE
Innovation Spaces – which can refer to any space intentionally designed to foster and facilitate good innovation work – come in all sorts, shapes, and sizes...
READ MOREWe partner with committed business leaders to make their organizations the driving forces in their markets.
CONTACT USSign up for our newsletter.
NEWSLETTER SIGN-UP