Seeking Growth

Some weeks ago I was shown the building of the bank that became Wema bank. That bank was Agbonmagbe cooperative bank and the bank building is still at Yaba, though no longer as a bank. No one will look at that bank building and it's name and believe that it will someday become the Wema bank of today. That bank, with time and bank reforms, grew in a way no one could have correctly predicted. Same with GTBank, when GTBank started in 1990 no one would have believed that it would someday become bigger than First Bank and also become the highest ranking bank in Nigeria. Apple made it's first breakthrough revenue from selling to a retail store, The Byte Shop. Today, The Byte Shop no longer exists but Apple is the world's biggest company. That is the power of growth. 

image: blog.frannet.com

It doesn't matter where you start from or how far ahead the competition is; what matters is that you never stop growing. Aim high. Be at the forefront of the revolution, be flexible persistent, keep your eye on where the ball is going to be and not where it has been, leverage technological change, understand the taste of the customers better than the competition and go further than the competition is willing to go. And soon you will be ahead of the competition. And if you don't relent, like Google, you will end up with no competition. That's how powerful seeking growth can be. It takes you from zero to the top and kills your competition. 

Most of the top companies today started in an ignoble way. Started so small and weak that no one felt threatened by their existence. A lot started as an extension of some youth's project or hobby. Microsoft, Apple, Yahoo, Google and Facebook.  And the one thing they all have in common is that they grew fast and for a long period. They were all ignored by the competition, even experienced being turned down by the competition, only to end up ruining the competition. Yahoo is being rendered obsolete by the very Google it refused to buy at a giveaway price. Amazon is wiping out an entire industry. Netflix killed the very company it begged for a business partnership at the start.

To seek growth is to keep pushing the limits, to keep attempting what no one is thinking of in the industry and to spend all you have on innovation. It's the only way companies grow and keep growing. The companies that stop innovating must spend all they have on acquiring the ones that are innovating or risk dying.

So if the companies you invest in are growing by spending their money on innovation why should you not be innovative? Why should you not seek your own growth by being at the innovative edge of your expertise? 

Why aren't you seeking growth?