Are You a Master of Scale?
Think Facebook, Uber, Google, Alibaba, Amazon; their business models might seem obvious after the fact, but weren’t appreciated at the time they were launched. In their book “Blitzscaling, the Lightning Fast Path to Building Massively Valuable Companies, authors Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh warn that “B-scaling is not for everyone or the faint of heart. High risk is involved and speed is emphasized over efficiency that allows you to go from a startup to a scaleup at a furious pace to capture the market. This is in the context that certain environmental conditions must be considered including, “a big new opportunity, First Scale Advantage, and the competitive landscape”.
Blitzscaling Beyond High Tech
While b-scaling is probably most applicable to high tech, its techniques can benefit any industry in which opportunities can demonstrate strong growth factors (market size, distribution capabilities, gross margins, etc) and overcome growth limiters (lack of product/market fit and operational scalability).
Blitzscaling within a Larger Organization
While the hyper growth of scaling is often synonymous with scrappy startups, it can also take place within larger, established organizations as well. None of the growth factors or limiters, and none of the proven patterns or business models, require a business to be independently owned, privately held or a venture backed organization. You can adopt and adapt the lessons of b-scaling to help your organization achieve rapid growth and first scaler advantage particularly in a new product initiative.
B-scaling is designed to assure that your workforce is ready for the challenges they will face during a period of rapid growth and afford your organization that critical edge over the competition in order to “scale” and capture the market.
China: The Land of Blitzscaling
At a macro level, Reid Hoffman and Chris Yeh talk about China’s ecosystem that fosters B-scaling. Like Silicon Valley it has an entrepreneurial culture that encourages risk taking, a highly developed financial sector that is willing to fund aggressive growth, and a plentiful supply of high-value technology talent. Thanks to its incredible recent growth, China’s market is both massive and open to disruption.
All is to say that “ growth” is a strategy that requires thoughtful risk taking, strategic and well thought out approaches to managing the speed to market. Leaders of rapidly growing organizations need resources and a support system that can help guide them through the challenges ahead. It takes leadership confident in taking reasonable risk but the reward is high.
If you are ready to start your Growth journey, WiseGrowth is a trusted, “outside in” support system for executives of scaling companies. I’d like to know your experience and thoughts and be happy to discuss further on Insights.
