There are three truths about revenue growth. It’s imperative. It’s perilous. And it’s possible regardless of your industry or starting point.

Revenue growth is imperative because, depending on the time horizon, it drives from 32% to 56% of total shareholder return (TSR). It’s perilous because more than one-third of companies deliver below-median TSR despite growing faster than the rate of inflation. It’s possible because the range of growth within industries is much wider than the range of median growth rates across industries. 

And there’s a fourth, critically important truth: there is no single path to growth. Many companies achieve it by doubling down on the core. Others do it by moving into adjacent markets. And some grow by exploring new, more distant frontiers. Growth can occur organically or via acquisition. It can result from product, service, or business model innovation, from geographic expansion, or from new pricing and go-to-market strategies.

The Search for Growth

We started with the universe of all public companies that reported financial data for the 20-year period from 2004 to 2023 and had revenue of at least $5 billion in 2014. This yielded a sample of 1,784 companies. Within that universe, we identified 330 growth champions that delivered exceptional, peer-beating revenue growth for a period of five or more years at some point during the two-decade period. Among these growers, not all succeeded in translating exceptional growth to exceptional value for shareholders. Just 57% outperformed the S&P 1200—and about 17% actually destroyed value.

We studied these companies’ growth paths, looked for clusters of similar blends of growth moves across core, adjacencies, and new frontiers, and sought factors that were predictive of the clusters we identified. We found that looking at companies in a matrix defined by two variables—one a dimension of industry attractiveness (market growth rate) and the other a proxy for company performance (company share trajectory)—was the most illuminating.

Six Starting-Point Archetypes

Gaining Share in a Fast-Growth Industry. Growers in this quadrant of the matrix find themselves at the right place, at the right time, with the right offer. We call them Stars. Companies in this archetype are having their moment in the spotlight, and they need to press their advantage while it lasts. Success requires a laser focus on scaling and achieving executional excellence in the core and potentially taking advantage of near adjacencies. Consistent with the imperative to scale, Stars typically spend 30% more on sales and marketing as a percentage of revenue than companies in other archetypes.

Losing Share in a Fast-Growth Industry. If you’re not winning in an attractive industry sector, something is wrong. Maybe it’s poor execution of a winning strategy, maybe your offering suffers from some type of structural disadvantage, or maybe both. The generic strategy in this situation is to fix what’s broken and then scale for success.

Losing Share in a Slow-Growth Industry. Companies in this matrix position, which we identify as the Challenged archetype, face headwinds that go beyond the relative unattractiveness of the industry in which they compete. They’re losing share to rivals because of disruption to the products, services, or business models they offer or because the features, cost, and execution of those offerings are less appealing than the competition’s. They need to pivot to grow. The 21% of companies in our sample that ultimately achieved breakout growth from this starting position tended to spend 18% more on R&D as a percentage of sales than companies in other archetypes—inventing their way into a winning position in an adjacency or new frontier.