Growth Strategy: Expanding While Staying Resilient

Eric Viardot ()
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Eric Viardot: Skema Business School, Skema Executive Education

Chapter 11 in The Timeless Principles of Successful Business Strategy, 2026, pp 121-136 from Springer

Abstract: Abstract Sustainable growth is not a goal in itself but a consequence of strategic clarity. While some firms thrive at a moderate scale, others pursue disciplined expansion to achieve market dominance. True profitable growth is measured by customer reach, revenue, and market share rather than by internal headcount. Growth is driven by multiple motives: maximizing operational potential through excess capabilities; leveraging R&D to sustain innovation and advantage; achieving economies of scale and scope; enhancing market attractiveness and brand equity; securing long-term revenue through customer acquisition and retention; spreading risk across products, markets, or geographies; responding to shareholder expectations; and adapting to external forces such as competition, regulation, or technological shifts. Enduring firms pursue growth through specialization, capability enhancement, leverage, and diversification. Internationalization is a common path to diversification. Many also rely on external growth via acquisitions, though this route carries risks such as poor execution, failed integration, and mistimed deals, risks that resilient firms know how to manage. Growth strategies inevitably encounter limits, including market saturation, legal constraints, cognitive distortions, structural inefficiencies, cultural erosion, and reputational risks. Enduring firms respond through restructuring, ecosystem engagement, and cultural vigilance. They recognize when growth becomes counterproductive and are willing to divest or exit, knowing that every business has an optimal size.

Keywords: Sustainable growth; Strategic expansion; External growth; Limits to growth; Firms; Specialization; Diversification; Corporate acquisition; Reasons for growth; Limits to growth (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2026
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DOI: 10.1007/978-3-032-14617-5_11

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