Driving innovation and growth in your business

The conversation was a whirlwind tour of topics, with practical insights and strategies shared that could be applied to businesses at any stage. Below are some of the key takeaways from the session, offering valuable advice to any company looking to grow and thrive in today’s ever-evolving marketplace.

Developing a Growth Strategy: Know Your Customers, Find Your Niche

The first critical takeaway was the importance of developing a solid growth strategy and how to go about it. There are plenty of tools to help with that, but the reality is that every business must carve out its own path based on its unique circumstances. A solid strategy needs:

• A deep understanding of your customers. What are their needs? What are their pain points? How can you help them?
• Honest feedback on your products or services, not what your (potential) customers think you want to hear.
• Clarity about your niche, so you can focus your efforts and be clear about the value you add. Regardless of the maturity of your business, you can’t be all things to all people and trying to do that is a recipe for failure.
• An understanding of when you need investment to grow and why. How will it contribute to your growth goals? A well-timed investment in the right areas can fuel expansion, enhance efficiency, and position a company for long-term success. Start-ups need to decide whether to give-up some equity, and potentially control, in return for accelerated growth.

Leveraging Technology and AI for Growth: Efficiency or Enhancement?

The critical takeaway here was to start with a clear understanding of your business objectives and how technology can enable or enhance their delivery rather than jumping into new technology solutions. , Businesses should ask themselves: What are we trying to achieve? Is this about improving efficiency, about improving outcomes and service for customers, or about disruption?

Unsurprisingly, AI was a hot topic, with varying opinions about the scale of its future impact. However, regardless it was clear that AI will change the operating context in the coming years. One of the most compelling points made was how AI is lowering the barriers to expertise across all sectors. Small and medium-sized businesses can now access tools that were once reserved for the biggest players in the market, levelling the playing field and changing the dynamics around competition.

The discussion highlighted that the companies that succeed will be those that are agile, open to change, and proactive about exploring new ideas and solutions. Staying ahead of the curve means understanding industry trends, listening to customers, and continuously evolving your offer to meet their needs.

Ensuring the Capability to Deliver

The final takeaways from our discussion centred around the critical role of alignment across the business – and how essential this is to ensure delivery of your growth strategy. This drew together 3 key themes:

• The right leadership to turn strategy into action. For successful delivery, a diverse and effective leadership team is essential. Leaders need to have the skills to look outwards as well as inwards, and to recognise the importance of agility. They need to be focused and determined, but also open to opportunities and other perspectives. Having a good blend of skills, experience and views in your leadership team is essential.
• An organisational culture that supports the delivery of your growth strategy is essential. What that culture is will be different for every business based on their unique context, but everyone in it must understand the values of the business and the behaviours that are acceptable or not acceptable as a result. This empowers individuals to work together and means that the leadership can be comfortable that the team will ‘do the right thing’, even when no-one is watching, thereby accelerating delivery and growth.
• Clear communication of the goals and strategy are essential to ensure successful delivery. If every employee can understand their role in achieving the goals, they will be empowered to “own” their part of the strategy and contribute to its success.

Final Thoughts

The roundtable session was a valuable opportunity to hear from a diverse range of businesses and share insights on how to overcome the challenges of growth. Whether you are an ambitious start-up or a more established company, the strategies discussed—knowing your customers, investing wisely, leveraging technology, and building strong alignment across the business —are all essential elements for delivering business growth.

If there’s one thing that was clear from our discussion, it’s this: growth is not a linear process, and it’s rarely easy. A successful growth strategy isn’t just a document on a shelf or a server —it requires a team that is committed, capable, and aligned with the company’s long-term vision. It requires dedication, focus and agility. Without the right leadership and culture, even the best-laid plans can falter, but with the right building blocks in place, businesses can successfully navigate the next phase of their growth and achieve long-term success.