SMART GROWTH
Building an Enduring Business by Managing the Risks of Growth
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By Edward D. Hess,
Professor of Business Administration & Batten Executive-in-Residence
Darden Graduate School of Business
Charlottesville, VA 22903
edward_hess@bus.emory.edu
• Media
Hits
• Investment
Business Daily interview by Norm Alster:
Companies Face The Dark And Light Sides Of Business Growth
•
Ready,
Set, Grow
Deciding how (and
when) to reinvigorate growth now ranks as a CFO's biggest challenge.
• Forbes
Commentary:
False Gods And Wall Street's Future
•
Professor
Hess' post to The Huffington Post
What's Lost in the Debate Over Financial Regulation
Reform? Real Reform.
•
Blog
interview by Adrian Gardella
•
The
SpokenWord interview with Professor Hess
•
Wall
Street Journal Radio interview
• The
Wall Street Journal: This Morning interview
• The
Street:
Did Starbucks Outgrow Its Cozy Essence?
• Business
Insider Interview
• Watch
the Interview with Clarity Media
• Columbia
University Press Blog
• BusinessWeek:
Greece's
Problem is Everyone's Problem
• Wall
St. Cheat Sheet Exclusive!
• Forbes.com
Commentary;
Bigger
Is Not Always Better - What the Toyota shutdown can teach us
about growth.
Synopsis | Reviews
| Blog Posts | Purchase
Wall Street
believes that all public companies should grow smoothly and continuously,
as evidenced by ever-increasing quarterly earnings, and that all
companies either "grow or die." Introducing a research-based
growth model called "Smart Growth," Edward D. Hess challenges
this ethos and its dangerous mentality, which often deters real
growth and pressures businesses to create, manufacture, and purchase
noncore earnings just to appease Wall Street.
Smart Growth
accounts for the complexity of growth from the perspective of
organization, process, change, leadership, cognition, risk management,
employee engagement, and human dynamics. Authentic growth is much
more than a strategy or a desired result. It is a process characterized
by complex change, entrepreneurial action, experimental learning,
and the management of risk. Hess draws on extensive public and
private company research, incorporating case studies of Best Buy,
Sysco, UPS, Costco, Starbucks, McDonalds, Coca Cola, Room &
Board, Home Depot, Tiffany & Company, P&G, and Jet Blue.
With conceptual innovations such as an Authentic Earnings and
a Growth System framework, a seven-step growth funnel pipeline,
a Growth Decision Template, and a Growth Risks Audit, Hess provides
a blueprint for building an enduring business that strives to
be better, rather than simply bigger.
Reviews
" Smart
Growth will bend your mind, challenge your assumptions, and set
you on a new growth trajectory. If you want to understand how following
advice from Wall Street can doom you to destruction, read this book."
-- Richard D'Aveni
Tuck School of Business at Dartmouth College, and author of Hypercompetition
and Beating the Commodity Trap: How to Maximize Your Competitive
Position and Increase Your Pricing Power
"Hess
offers the reader a thoughtful critique of the assumptions underlying
the prevailing logic for the growth imperative that is so widely
accepted."
-- Robert K. Kazanjian
Goizueta Business School, Emory University, and coeditor of
The Search for Organic Growth
"Hess
provides insight as well as prescriptions for how to lead effectively
and how to grow intelligently."
-- Kim Cameron
Ross School of Business and the School of Education, University
of Michigan, and author of Positive Leadership: Strategies for
Extraordinary Performance
"Hess
takes dead aim at one of the sacred shibboleths of business&
mdash;the notion that companies must 'grow or die'& mdash;and
scores a bull's-eye. He makes a devastating case and demonstrates
how destructive the blind pursuit of growth can be, and has been,
to businesses of all types, especially publicly-owned ones. Along
the way, Hess maps an alternative approach to managing business
growth that focuses on the long-term health of the enterprise.
It's a powerful argument and one that should be taken to heart
by corporate executives, entrepreneurs, and policymakers alike."
-- Bo Burlingham
editor-at-large of Inc. magazine and author of Small Giants:
Companies That Choose To Be Great Instead of Big
"Hess's
insight and research provide a navigational path that illuminates
key success factors and models that drive exponential growth."
-- Jeffrey S. Shuman
Harris Corporation
"In this
masterful work, Edward D. Hess shows us how companies can grow
in a healthy and organic manner, one that is sustainable and beneficial
for all stakeholders, including society as a whole."
-- Raj Sisodia
Bentley University, and coauthor of Firms of Endearment: How
World Class Companies Profit from Passion and Purpose
"This
book will challenge your basic assumptions about business and
growth. It needs to be read and talked about in both companies
and business schools."
-- R. Edward Freeman
Darden Business School, and coauthor of Managing for Stakeholders:
Survival, Reputation, and Success
"Warning against the creeping corruption of 'managed earnings'
and 'making the numbers,' Edward D. Hess wisely urges business manager-leaders
to keep their focus on the real growth of getting better, not bigger,
and creating true value, not short-term earnings per share."
-- Charles Ellis
author of Winning the Loser's Game: Timeless Strategies for Successful
Investing
"
Smart Growth is a provocative and useful evidence-based approach
to understanding the principles of corporate growth."
-- Mary
Ann Glynn
Boston College
Blog
Posts
Financial
Reform: Attack Systemic "Short-termism", Too!
3:13 AM PST, January 21, 2010
In addition to reducing systemic risk, eliminating too big to
fail, re-instilling moral hazard, and separating traditional banking
activities from proprietary trading, financial reform should tackle
the real growth and innovation inhibiting "short-term mentality"
that dominates our capital markets. The foundation of this mentality
is the unsupported erroneous Wall Street "rules" that
public companies should grow continuously and in a linear manner
as evidenced by ever increasing quarterly earnings and that all
businesses must "grow or die". In my book Smart Growth,
I show that there is no empirical or real world basis for those
rules,which can drive corporate behaviors that delay or even impede
real growth and innovation that our economy so desperately needs.
We need disclosure / transparency, executive compensation, and
taxation reforms to attack this systemic "short-termism".
Growth
Can Be Good & Growth Can Be Bad
5:14 AM PDT, September 7, 2009
Most business leaders belief that their business must "grow
or die". In the case of public companies, most ascribe to
Wall Street's view that such growth should be continuous and linear.
There is no empirical justification for those beliefs.
Growth is change. Growth can challenge people, controls, cultures,
and in some cases customer value propositions and it may put you
in a different competitive space facing bigger and better competition.
Growth creates risks that need to be managed. Growth should be
a conscious strategic decision made after weighing the pros and
cons.
Purchase
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