Introducing Business Strategy at Prophet – The Uncommon Growth Company
In today’s economic climate, businesses are facing a dual challenge: managing financial pressure while still being expected to deliver growth. Market volatility, shifting customer expectations and rapid technological change have made it harder than ever to find clear, actionable paths forward. Many organizations are being asked to do more with less—yet the demand for innovation and transformation has never been higher.
At Prophet, we’ve seen this tension firsthand. Over the years, we’ve worked closely with C-suite leaders—more and more with CEOs—who are not just looking for incremental improvements, but for bold market-moving strategies. These leaders value our ability to think creatively, act decisively and move quickly. They’ve come to us not just for brand and marketing expertise, but for help answering the big questions:
Where should we play? How do we win? And how do we do it faster than the competition?
That’s why we’ve formalized our Business Strategy offering.
While we’ve been doing this work for years, we’re now bringing it to the forefront because the need has never been greater. Our clients are asking for more than traditional consulting. They want a partner who can help them uncover new opportunities, test bold ideas and bring them to market with speed and confidence.
Growth-Oriented Business Strategy: Where Rigor Meets Imagination
At Prophet, we craft business strategies that ignite demand swiftly. Whether it’s building new categories, redefining revenue streams or launching innovative ventures or services, we bring a relentless focus on the customer.
Our approach focuses on identifying high-potential opportunities and developing bold, actionable ideas. We break free from traditional methods, embrace human-centered creativity and harness AI. We seamlessly transition from ‘where to play’ to ‘how to win,’ accelerating speed-to-market and enabling rapid testing and experimentation.
Prophet is the ideal partner for businesses eager to develop their strategy with a go-to-market mindset. By combining strategic precision with a creative mind and skill set, we quickly uncover actionable pathways to drive sustainable success and competitive advantage.
Our Business Strategy Offerings
We help organizations unlock uncommon growth through a suite of interconnected strategy services:
Story of Value
Define and articulate the unique value your business delivers—and why it matters now & in the future.
Future Casting & Scenario Planning
Explore multiple futures to anticipate change, reduce risk and build resilient strategies.
Growth Landscaping & Opportunity Identification
Map the market, identify white space and prioritize the most promising growth opportunities.
Offer Portfolio Optimization
Align your products, services and experiences to customer needs and business goals.
Uncommon Growth Moves
Identify and execute bold, differentiated strategies that challenge industry norms and unlock new value.
Business Model Design
Reimagine how your business creates, delivers and captures value in a rapidly evolving landscape.
Prophet research shows how some companies achieve uncommon growth year after year.
The world today faces a new wave of uncertainty—economic headwinds, geopolitical conflict, and rapid technological shifts are testing the resolve of business leaders everywhere. While the current moment feels unprecedented, the past five years were no less turbulent. Our research into companies that achieved Uncommon Growth—sustained, industry-beating performance from 2019 to 2024—offers timely lessons in how exceptional growth is not only possible in times of disruption, but often because of how leaders respond to it.
What is Uncommon Growth?
We define Uncommon Growth as exceptional, sustainable growth – 2x industry average over a five-year period – through innovative and human-centered strategies that drive meaningful impact. Our research identified 100+ companies that delivered uncommon growth since 2019 and – more importantly – revealed how they produced it.
Delivering Uncommon Growth
Our research methodology: We examined the results of companies in the S&P Composite 1500, which is a broad measure of the US large, medium and small public companies, covering 90% of US market capitalization. Our list of 179 Uncommon Growth companies include:
01 Four of the Magnificent 7 – Amazon, Apple, NVIDIA, and Tesla
02 Organizations both big and small, with more of the latter, which have an advantage driving growth from a smaller base
40 from the S&P 500, including 28 with $13 billion or more in revenue
137 from the S&P 1000
03 On average, these companies achieved 27% annual revenue growth from 2019-2024, compared to only 6% for other companies.
04 45 firms that engaged in significant M&A activity in the past five years, with total estimated deal value of $450+ billion.
What Drives Uncommon Growth?
Our research and analysis revealed three key drivers of uncommon growth:
These drivers don’t exist in isolation. In fact, the synergy among them drives transformative impact via human-centered strategies at many top performers. For instance, a strong, adaptive culture fosters innovation by creating an environment where employees feel empowered to experiment and take calculated risks. A resilient culture also helps organizations withstand disruption and adapt more readily to changing market conditions, a requirement for sustaining growth over time.
A note about M&A: Growth is the main goal of many acquisitions, and some companies have used M&A to achieve Uncommon Growth. The key is strategic intent – identifying deals that go beyond just “buying revenue” to produce new capabilities, enter adjacent markets, and accelerate speed-to-market.
A note about sectors: Some industries have higher growth than others compared to their respective industry averages. For instance, Uncommon Growth companies in consumer staples had an average five-year CAGR representing 670% growth compared to non-UGC firms.
Our research and analysis revealed three key drivers of uncommon growth:
Driver 01: Customer Obsession
Uncommon growth starts with a deep, empathetic understanding of customers and a relentless commitment to fulfilling their needs. It’s not just about driving sales but becoming an indispensable part of people’s lives. This obsession involves a relentless focus on customer needs and experiences and can drive initiatives by informing product development priorities and accelerating innovation to adapt to changes more quickly.
3x higher sales and marketing investment
Between 2019-2024, UGC companies invested +5pp more of their revenue on sales and marketing than non-UGC companies (12% vs 7%) and expanded these investments at 3x the rate of non-UGC companies (20% vs 6%).
Uncommon Growth in Action
Hims & Hers captured $1.5B in annual revenue and built a strong healthcare brand focused on Gen Z, which is different from how it has been done for other generations. By fusing cultural sensitivity, convenience, affordability and a feedback-driven approach, the company turned stigmatized healthcare needs — like hair loss, erectile dysfunction, mental health, and acne — into approachable conversations that address key pain points (long wait times, uncomfortable in-person consultations, opaque pricing).
Their strength lies not just in identifying trends but in creating a nimble infrastructure to respond to them—both technologically and creatively. Data-driven insights based on regular feedback from an engaged base continue to fuel new offers and experiences. A retail aesthetic more akin to Glossier or Casper than Rogaine — clean design, warm tones, and frictionless UX – have set it apart from its competitors.
American Express is known for its premium service and the exclusive access it offers card members, integrating exceptional lifestyle experiences alongside traditional financial services. Its growth strategies are driven by a deeply ingrained customer-first mindset and enabled by “closed loop” data sets, which incorporate both detailed transaction data and merchant data.
The unique combination of data generates insight that AmEx uses to more effectively engage and serve both corporate card account and cardmembers at large. The results are industry-leading Net Promoter Scores and high customer retention, particularly in its high-value card segments.
Driver 02: Pervasively Innovative
Sustaining uncommon growth takes more than splashy, one-off new product launches. Transformative and lasting impact happens when innovation is embedded in the cultural DNA, is part of everyday operations and supported by continuous R&D investments and recognized by short-term impact. It’s essential to build innovation as a capability.
+17% higher R&D investment growth vs non-UCG companies. Uncommon Growth companies average R&D growth of 23% between 2019 and 2024, versus 6% for non-UCG companies.
Innovation can be a growth multiplier in both existing and adjacent markets. Uniquely rich experiences and targeted solutions unlock untapped value when they meet customer needs in surprising and powerful ways.
Speed matters, too. Developing new offerings with agility and getting them to market faster are hallmarks of uncommon growth. That’s why innovation should be viewed not as magic, but rather as a repeatable and scalable capability.
Uncommon Growth in Action
Duolingo’s data-driven Growth Model and innovative mindset have helped quadruple daily users since 2019. Their approach combines gamification principles, behavioral science and aggressive AI adoption to continually enhance content and boost engagement. A marketing strategy centered on social-first storytelling drives earned media.
The heart of Duolingo’s innovation is a full-stack R&D engine, where in-house linguists, learning scientists, and AI researchers continuously test and iterate through live A/B experiments (as many 3,000 at any given time), using a sophisticated personalization engine to adapt difficulty, content pacing, and feedback in real-time, significantly improving retention and learning outcomes.
NVIDIA has not just innovated successfully—it has institutionalized innovation as a core competency. Through high R&D investment, a vertically integrated platform approach, strategic risk-taking, and diverse innovation methods, it has consistently stayed ahead of major technology curves. Its recent dominance in AI infrastructure and services is the clearest signal that this innovation capability is paying off at scale.
This was not just luck, NVIDIA had the foresight in 2006 to begin positioning its GPUs beyond gaming, particularly for parallel processing tasks critical to AI.
Driver 03: Culture as a Catalyst
Culture, when seen through a human-centered lens, becomes far more than an enabler of strategy—it becomes the strategy, providing the connective tissue between a company’s purpose, its people, and its performance. In this view, culture is not a backdrop to growth—it is the engine of growth.
Designing culture intentionally—from the inside out—requires aligning leadership behaviors, organizational structures, and employee experiences with a clearly articulated purpose. It’s about activating the behaviors, beliefs, and rituals that inspire people to move in the same direction. It’s not about top-down mandates or one-size-fits-all frameworks but about nurturing the soul of an organization so that every decision and every interaction reflects its unique identity. That’s how to create a culture where transformation not only takes root but thrives.
60% of Uncommon Growth companies have been recognized for cultures that attract and retain top talent via development programs and ethical practices.
Uncommon Growth companies actively align culture with growth strategies. Their leadership styles and decision-making processes directly account for employee engagement and customer needs. Workers are encouraged to be creative, experiment, contribute ideas, and learn from mistakes.
Uncommon Growth in Action
Paylocity’s culture isn’t just a soft asset, it’s a scalable system that powers innovation, retention, differentiation, and loyalty. By designing internal processes, employee experience, and even product features around its cultural values, Paylocity has built a durable competitive advantage. The company’s consistent focus on transparency, inclusion, and empowerment fosters trust—both within teams and with clients—resulting in faster decision-making and stronger cross-functional execution. Culture also acts as a filter in Paylocity’s acquisition strategy, ensuring that new additions enhance rather than dilute its value system. Perhaps most critically, Paylocity has translated its internal culture into a marketable product differentiator: its HCM platform promotes engagement, collaboration, and connection, mirroring how the company operates internally. This alignment between how it works and what it sells creates authenticity, deepens customer loyalty, and positions Paylocity as a trusted partner in shaping the future of work.
The Ensign Group, a leader in the complex skilled nursing sector, has experienced 16% CAGR and increasing margins through a culture centered on decentralized leadership and entrepreneurial autonomy. Rather than top-down standardization, each facility operates as a self-managed business unit, with administrators empowered to make operational, staffing, and care decisions, which fosters a sense of ownership, enables faster decision-making, and produces superior patient outcomes. This approach also helps Ensign integrate acquisitions rapidly.
Modern Approach: Platform Business Models
Digital platforms have emerged as a modern approach to Uncommon Growth, allowing businesses to observe, interact with, and provide value to customers throughout their choose-and-use journeys. Platform business models enable—and require—companies to supercharge their customer-obsession, innovation, and culture to accelerate growth:
01 New levels of customer-obsession to build network effects while serving customer coalitions—extending beyond users to include sponsors, providers, creators, rule-makers, and promoters.
02 New levels of innovation that provide interactive, AI-driven benefits as customers use—spanning workflows, content, and ecosystem connections (including loyalty programs).
03 New levels of coordinated culture and operations for synchronized business—spanning insights, innovation, marketing, sales, and customer success.
When executed well, platform business models renew brand relevance, investor confidence, and competitive readiness—leading to uncommon growth.
Uncommon Growth in Action
Airbnb grew the core business for a decade after its founding in 2008, then shifted to beyond-the-core growth to remain uncommon. It leaped beyond lodging through Airbnb Local Experiences and Adventure Travel – perfect extensions for its world-wide travel community.
It then diversified service formats to include empty vacation homes, long-term lodging, and temporary office spaces. It is now adding home services providers to its platform and empowering co-hosting teams to form and operate seamlessly – all while integrating AI to enhance every service. Airbnb’s creativity, customer focus, and has driven an 18% CAGR.
RB Global was founded in 1958 as Ritchie Brothers, a Canadian on-site auctioneer for industrial equipment. RB Global transformed first into a 1990’s online auction site, then unleashed Uncommon Growth by launching a multi-sided platform for industrial equipment lifecycle management.
Platform-powered innovations for equipment valuation, financing, parts procurement, and shipping create powerful network effects, with more inventory and services attracting more buyers and sellers. Greater transaction velocity, recurring service revenues, and cross-sell synergies helped the 60-year-old firm realize a three-year CAGR of 54%.
A Multi-Dimensional Action Plan for Uncommon Growth
Unlocking uncommon growth is as much about the “how” as the “what.” Combining new capabilities, cultural attributes (e.g., collaboration, creativity), and operational discipline around innovation can power companies to uncover opportunities and execute multi-dimensional growth strategies faster and more repeatably than in the past.
To drive uncommon growth, companies must have:
Designing touchpoints based on deep understanding of and empathy with customer needs and regularly interacting with customers to continually gather feedback and behavioral insights
Ensuring consistency and integration across channels, with tailored experiences and offerings aligned to individual preferences with flexible features and modular options
Quickly adapting products and services based on evolving market demands, and streamlined decision making via flat hierarchies, with clearly defined go/no-go milestones for advancing pilots and scaling experiments
Cultivating a “test-and-learn” mindset and promoting entrepreneurial thinking and behaviors at every level of the organization, with teams encouraged to take risks, fail fast and apply lessons learned
Exploring multiple pathways to growth including product enhancements (e.g., subscriptions, bundles, personalization), new distribution options (e.g., partnerships, ecosystems, channel expansions) and tech-driven optimization (e.g., automated campaigns and buying and service processes)
Defining tangible innovation goals and developing repeatable innovation capabilities as part of standard operations, with innovation viewed as a business-as-usual function (like finance and HR)
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Seven Growth Moves for Marketers in Uncommon Times
Seven bold moves to help marketers lead through uncertainty and unlock uncommon growth—no matter the conditions.
You might be feeling the squeeze.
From one side, there’s inflation, tariffs, planning whiplash and fragile consumer spending. From the other, it’s pressure to grow despite fewer resources and sharper scrutiny of every investment.
And in the middle of it all? You—the Chief Marketing Officer.
Meanwhile, AI is rewriting the rules of marketing—redefining what customers expect, changing how teams work, and fueling a new era of marketing mayhem. Our report, The Rise of the AI-Driven Consumer, puts it all out there.
You’re driving near-term ROI and long-term relevance. Keeping teams energized through high-pressure deadlines. Working around and through the constraints of legacy systems and trying to figure out what emerging tech can do for your business. And doing it all with clarity, confidence and composure in the face of intense pressure to show measurable results.
But here’s the truth: these uncommon times aren’t all that uncommon. Consider just the last few decades—global conflicts and cultural tensions, a global pandemic, the global financial crisis, and the dot-com crash and well, you get it. If anything’s predictable, it’s instability.
Now take a breath. The good news is that we’ve been here before. And every era of uncertainty offers disproportionate growth on the other side—growth that sparks the next wave of disruptors. Need proof? Check your phone and you’ll see some of them: PayPal, Spotify, Uber, Calm.
Our take? There’s no sense waiting for stability. It is better to start leaning into the goal of Uncommon Growth, no matter the macroeconomic conditions. Because that’s how Uncommon Growth happens. It’s breakthrough, repeatable, market-leading and category-shaping growth that’s rooted in clarity, relevance, and resilience—and not at all dependent on perfect conditions.
So how do brands unlock Uncommon Growth in uncertain times? It starts with action—clear, purposeful, and well-timed. Because while growth is easier in the “easy times,” waiting for them is a losing game. The best brands don’t pause. They move with intent, agility, and confidence. And they’re rewarded for it.
We’ve outlined seven moves—shaped by our work with clients across market cycles—to help you grow not in spite of uncertainty, but because of it.
Driving Uncommon Growth
Uncommon Move 1: Focus on Clarity, Not Certainty
You can’t predict what’s next. But you can make it clear where you stand—and where you want to go.
What this means for the business: In moments of ambiguity, a clearly articulated purpose, brand positioning and strategic direction give your teams a relatable, sustainable north star. Clarity fosters faster and more confident decision-making.
What this means for the people: Employees don’t expect perfect answers, but they do want to know the why behind the what. Transparency and consistency reduce anxiety, build trust and boosts engagement and commitment across teams
Uncommon Move 2: Integrate Brand and Demand
This isn’t a time to pick sides—it’s a time to orchestrate both to work harder for you.
What this means for the business: Resilient growth comes from integrating long-term brand equity with proven demand tactics that drive revenue in the near term. CMOs must bridge silos, build shared KPIs and optimize both engines in parallel.
What this means for the people: Marketing teams often feel pulled in opposite directions. Help them see how their work contributes to a connected system, not just a single, standalone workstream. Our Brand and Demand playbook shows how you can make it happen.
Uncommon Move 3: Invest in Experience—Even While Cutting Costs
The first instinct is often to trim the surface. But the right move is to protect what your customers and employees actually feel.
What this means for the business: Prioritizing investments in experience lens means protecting the “moments that matter”—the key touchpoints that deliver real value and reinforce key brand equities. More intelligent prioritization builds loyalty without overspending.
What this means for the people: Experience budget cuts often impact people first. Involve teams in reshaping the most meaningful experiences. Empower teams to simplify and refine, not just scale back.
Uncommon Move 4: Double Down on Employee Engagement
In uncertain times, your people need more than direction—they need care, communication and a reason to believe.
What this means for the business: Attrition is expensive and damaging in moments of instability. A strong employee valuable proposition, flexible policies and visible leadership help retain talent and maintain momentum.
What this means for the people: As people navigate volatility in their own way, flexibility, empathy and purpose-aligned leadership help them stay motivated and committed.
Uncommon Move 5: Plan for What-if, Not Just What is
When uncertainty is the norm, scenario planning can be an optimistic, forward-looking growth strategy—not a defensive risk exercise.
What this means for the business: Smart CMOs are pressure-testing plans against multiple futures, so they can move quickly and pivot nimbly when conditions shift. Scenario planning isn’t about predicting perfectly. It’s about being ready. See our approach for Scenario Planning in Marketing.
What this means for the people: Your team doesn’t need certainty. They need to know there’s a plan. Exploring a range of scenarios can give people confidence and a sense of control—especially when everything’s in motion, all at once.
Uncommon Move 6: Embrace the Unfamiliar
Creativity often thrives within limits—and uncertainty can open the door to your next great idea.
What this means for the business: Disruption often creates whitespace—nimble teams can spot it and move first by testing new formats, tools, partnerships and messages.
What this means for the people: Trying something new can make people feel vulnerable. Normalize experimentation, celebrate smart risk-taking and make it safe to stretch.
Uncommon Move 7: Experiment Small to Win Big
Quiet innovation becomes a superpower and speaks volumes in times of uncertainty.
What this means for the business: In turbulent times, smart CMOs run small, fast experiments to reduce risk and build momentum. Innovation doesn’t need to be loud if it’s fast and focused.
What this means for the people: Testing new ideas can energize teams and clarify what works. Small wins start a virtuous circle of forward progress and rising confidence.
Even in the most turbulent times, some companies manage to achieve and sustain growth. Some even manage to unlock uncommon growth. And while growth has always favored the bold, bold doesn’t mean reckless. It means clear thinking over knee-jerk reactions. Zooming out for the big picture. Acting with intention, clarity and confidence, not fear and hesitation. We help businesses and brands do that every day. Talk to us.
Three Growth Engineering Tactics to Enhance the Private Equity Playbook
Unlock value beyond the deal through storytelling, go-to-market optimization and culture.
2024 marked an interesting but challenging year in PE. According to Pitchbook, U.S. firms closed 46 first-time funds, raising $9.2 billion—a significant drop from $21.5 billion across 121 funds in 2023. PE also encountered sustained headwinds on entry with the cost of leverage up to 10% in 2024 vs. 5% in 2022.
As PE combats a few tough years, green shoots are starting to emerge. PE exits in 2024 were at $902 billion compared to $754 billion in 2023, according to Wachtell, Lipton, Rosen & Katz. This is still well below pandemic-era highs but leaves renewed optimism for 2025.
This stalled deal activity has made clear that while private equity (PE) firms have mastered the art of financial engineering, operational efficiencies, and strategic acquisitions, today’s PE environment requires an expanded toolkit of revenue and growth engineering to unlock value. One that specifically focuses on unlocking the true potential of a well-defined and executed CMO or Growth Officer agenda post-deal.
What stands out in Prophet’s experience working with a network of trusted PE partners and their portfolio companies is the power of value unlock potential beyond the deal. Specifically, bringing in a growth-oriented playbook alongside an operational and financial engineering one that focuses on four targeted actions with seismic potential to accelerate time to value.
Crafting a Compelling and Coherent Story of Value: Rethink Your Company’s Identity to act as a Greater Value Multiplier
Alongside operational and financial levers, the impact of a strong story of value and brand positioning can have on strengthening enterprise valuation cannot be understated. We’ve seen investor valuation models shift towards more forward-leaning expectations and storytelling. A strong story of value is an essential foundation in supporting the brand and can help reduce customer churn, enable premium pricing and attract top talent.
The story of value has two parts: the corporate story, which is investor-focused and catalyzes leadership and business value, and the brand story, which is customer-facing and drives awareness and customer consideration and retention.
These all work together as important signals to a much broader set of stakeholders, ultimately enhancing exit appeal to strategic buyers or IPO markets. A well-structured brand system should go beyond a creative exercise to crystallize business ambition and serve as the essential wrapper that catalyzes a new growth thesis. The creative strength of the work is also not trivial; new strategies can fall flat or get lost in old design systems and messages.
It is essential to nail the blend of both stories to create a symbiotic relationship that enhances overall enterprise value.
Driving a Customer-Led and Commercially Minded Go-To-Market Reconfiguration: Fix the Leaky Funnels and Unlock New Sources of Revenue
Companies may risk struggling with stagnant growth, inefficient go-to-market strategies and underperforming sales motions post-acquisition. Partially changing leadership through the transition of ownership can risk decelerating progress in the short term. Post-investment, the primary goal is to avoid harming existing businesses and commercial momentum while reorganizing and integrating new technologies and products.
However, changing leadership creates new opportunities to get closer to customers and the marketplace, uncover new insights and revisit outdated go-to-market processes by re-engineering the experience from first principles. This allows the organization to realign its brand, marketing and sales tactics in a way that can improve conversion, expand share of wallet and shorten sales cycles.
The real unlock is creating a new or improved system that successfully drives leads and follows them through an improved sales channel, enhancing both demand generation and the sales process. These types of transactions can also serve as welcoming opportunities to deliberately engage with customers more broadly. Specifically, conversations that expand the frame of reference of the new entity and open opportunities to deepen relationships or cross sell more effectively. Finding new processes for this that can scale in broader roll-ups can accelerate the time to exit for portfolio companies.
Using Culture as a Catalyst to Power Change: Get People to See, Believe and Live the Change
When PE firms acquire a company, there’s often a disconnect between leadership priorities, business strategy, organizational culture and the financial growth plan. Change is expected and constant during these transitions but is often not well communicated or orchestrated. New leaders are brought in to drive the change but need to lean heavily on legacy teams, especially in the beginning.
The HR function is often undervalued, but culture is critical at deal time. Building a unified culture accelerates integration and leverages an energized organization to achieve objectives. Post-deal, the focus shifts to attracting and retaining the right talent for the company’s vision. Highlighting both the initial integration and ongoing talent strategy is essential. A well thought out story of value and brand from empowered CMO and/or Growth Officers should be deliberately activated internally to shift employee culture to drive impact externally.
Where’s Your Playbook?
Prophet understands the essential role of revenue engineering for PE value creation—and more importantly, how to define and accelerate the right company efforts to gain a competitive edge in an increasingly complex valuation market. We routinely see PE firms with great playbooks and partners for rapid due diligence going into a deal that outlines strategic routes and assessments of where to play post-deal along with the risks associated with the moves.
However, post-acquisition can be the ideal time to bring in a growth-led “think and build” partner capable of accelerating the CMO or Growth Officer agenda to move quickly to execute how-to-win strategies that unpack new customer insights, depict a more coherent story of value, develop a refreshed identity, reimagine new customer experiences and power a renewed sense of culture.
Whether taking a controlling investment, executing a roll-up, carve-out, or a full-on turnaround, please contact us to learn more about how we can help.
Prophet’s 2024 Corporate Earnings summary, with 2025 implications.
2024 came in like a lion, with optimism and a return-to-growth mandate across sectors despite interest rate uncertainty and global unrest. After a challenging 2022 and 2023, consumers and companies resumed spending. Markets bounced back. In fact, in our 2024 summary, “Year of Resilience,” companies researched saw a 85% year-over-year net income increase across all the companies and sectors analyzed.
With new policies and a more favorable M&A environment, companies saw promise for 2025. And so did we as we analyzed year-end earnings reports of more than 50 of the world’s largest, fastest-growing and most relevant companies.
Our goal was straightforward: understand how leaders experienced the highs and lows of 2024 and uncover implications for 2025. As we listened and researched, most companies still see growth opportunities but CEOs and CFOs understand the need to remain vigilant—cautiously monitoring hypercomplex economic challenges in real time.
With that in mind, first, we’ll look back at the 2024 cross-company and industry drivers of growth as well as a few of the issues that kept leaders up at night. Then, we’ll look at what that might mean for 2025.
A Relentless Drive to Unlock Uncommon Growth
Last year, companies around the globe made confident and at times uncommon growth moves. Some invested in new customers. Netflix, for example, gained 19 million paying users by cracking down on subscription sharing and Airbnb invested $250 million to expand its core app usage. Others explored new territories. AB InBev poured millions of dollars into nonalcoholic brewing technology and Uber and Waymo expanded their autonomous ride-hailing offerings to more cities. In sustainable growth, Hyundai launched its “HTWO” brand to represent its world-leading hydrogen fuel cell system. The commitment to innovation reflects a broader mindset, well expressed by Ford CEO Jim Farley: “Our relentless focus on executing the Ford+ plan has delivered strong results, positioning us well for continued growth in 2025 and beyond.”
Transitioning to M&A, although it was a more muted landscape in 2024, we saw several strategic deals that signaled uncommon growth opportunities, including Exxon Mobil’s acquisition of Pioneer, Capital One’s pending acquisition of Discover that aims to redefine its role in the financial ecosystem and Verizon’s acquisition of Frontier Fiber, the largest pure-play fiber internet provider in the U.S.
As we move through 2025, leaders appear to be swinging big in innovation, market expansion and M&A as many expect their competitors will be quieter due to market uncertainty. Relative to M&A, exciting times are ahead with an estimated global deal value reaching $3.5 trillion. According to Morgan Stanley CFO Sharon Yeshaya, “This will not just be a blip on the radar, as M&A pipelines remain healthy and diversified.”
A Pivot to Leveraging AI as a Commercial Building Block
From “talking about AI” to “scaling AI” to “AI as a commercial driver of success,” the evolution of artificial intelligence since the early 2020s is striking. Beyond boosting efficiency, AI is being harnessed as a business engine. Tech giants, as expected, are broadcasting the generative AI enhancement of their product lines, providing relevant and tangible benefits—Apple Intelligence, Meta Glasses, Amazon’s Alexa+ and Tesla FSD cars, to name just a few. Google CEO Sundar Pichai stayed true to this trend, stating, “Scaling Gemini on the consumer side will be our biggest focus next year.”
Beyond the tech sector, other market leaders are also pushing AI-driven innovation. Chevron is utilizing its novel FaultAssist program to forecast disaster prevention. Pfizer is propelling AI-powered drug discovery and optimization of its back-end processes, enabling faster medication deployment. Lyft is using AI for driver support and troubleshooting, estimating a total of 28,000 hours saved in support time.
Amid the widespread and ongoing AI acceleration to date, leaders are anxious to push their AI agendas forward in 2025 while recognizing the need to clarify what their businesses truly need—both operationally and commercially. For instance, Delta CEO Ed Bastian is taking a more deliberate approach, ensuring alignment between core operations and the brand’s overall promise: “[Our] focus on AI is to learn, and to listen, and to make certain that we’re ready before we jump in with both feet.”
An Obsession with Being Market Back and Customer-Centered
Consumers are focusing on simplicity and speed. Fueled by what Accenture calls the “impatience economy,” they are siding with brands that are quick to market and bespoke in their offerings. From the fastest shipping to fast fashion, brands like Amazon and Zara are first in line. Fortive CEO James Lico shared, “The reason for [their] five-year track record of success is a commitment to their Fortive Business System … [which] helps identify unmet customer needs, develop new products and get them to market faster.”
But speed has its costs such as sustainability. A key focus of last year’s report, sustainability appears to have become more of a nice-to-have than a differentiator for 2025. Instead, consumers are prioritizing other areas and companies are following suit. For one, getting healthier, as personal health brands like Hims & Hers and Novo Nordisk are expanding with GLP-1 weight loss medications. Second, consumers continue to seek out unique experiences. Brands like Travel + Leisure and Mastercard are already benefiting from increased interest in tourism and more cross-border payments (up 24% year over year for the credit card company) and Marriott is growing its room count, adding 123,000 rooms in 2024.
Moving forward into 2025, we expect to see more innovation in the name of speed—from production to shipping to service models—as well as an effort to leverage customer data and feedback to further tailor offerings to meet unmet needs. Across offerings we also see an opportunity for more industries to get in on the health and overall self-betterment craze. As we touched on with AB InBev’s shift to nonalcoholic, we believe there’s room to succeed outside the obvious health-centric sectors.
A Desire to get the Employee Value Exchange Right
Today, companies’ policies around remote work continue to evolve. Firms with competitive hiring practices like JPMorgan are more comfortable taking a firm stance on return-to-office mandates while tech giants Apple and Microsoft have remained committed to hybrid policies. And in places where the industry is split, unhappy employees are speaking out. For example, when AT&T adopted a strict return-to-office policy, it sparked employee backlash on social media allowing Verizon to capitalize by recruiting AT&T employees with hybrid and remote offers.
The ongoing discourse around DEI in the workplace has further complicated the employer-employee value exchange, as has the perceived role AI will play in the workplace, tied to job displacement and uncertainties about adapting and pushback against AI adoption.
As highlighted in our research, these debates only intensify tension in the job market as talent shortages persist across industries. As the population ages, CEOs are expecting labor market shifts, with a large population of skilled laborers beginning to retire, leaving a void of qualified talent. In health care, CVS is making strides to address pharmacist shortages. In the aviation industry, American Airlines and United both paused hiring due to the high cost of training and aircraft shortages, in part due to Boeing’s departing engineers. On the positive side, Delta celebrated its profit-sharing day, distributing $1.4 billion to its employees promoting corporate culture.
A quarter into 2025, it’s clear that companies need to take a fresh look at their employee value proposition, their employee experience and what it will take to recruit and retain top talent.
A Strong Belief that Resiliency and Agility are now Operational Cornerstones
On a macro level, the global economy’s resilience has continued to be put to the test: interest rate debates, high inflation and geopolitical conditions created uncertainty, yet unemployment remained low and consumer spending persisted.
2024 proved to be a period of optimistic resilience. Eastman Chemical was hit by weak end-market demand, fluctuation in raw material prices and regulatory pressure. Yet, through innovation and the adoption of advanced technologies, it found ways to reach its earnings goals. Lockheed Martin faced supply chain disruptions and high material costs but expanded its engineering manufacturing facilities to meet rising demand. On the other hand, Exxon Mobil and Boeing felt the squeeze of fluctuating demand and material prices, leading to dips in net income—a reminder that even industry titans must continuously adapt.
Now, in 2025, some companies are demonstrating the importance of adaptability under the policies of the new administration to drive success. Apple plans to invest $500 billion to move a manufacturing facility from Mexico to Texas, avoiding the effects of cross-border tariffs. Amazon similarly continues to invest in data centers across the U.S.
With shifting economic policies, evolving regulatory landscapes and global market fluctuations, the true impact of these bold investments remains uncertain. As companies navigate this unpredictable environment, their ability to showcase cautious resilience will define their success in 2025 and beyond.
Acknowledgments: Bridget Mitchell, Hannah Anderson, Mary Kovacs and Samuel Pinchback.
It is evident that the navigation, success and resiliency of the companies we studied will continue to look different in 2025 compared to 2024. As the year progresses, companies will aspire to achieve positive outcomes; however, as variability remains high, it is imperative to err on the side of adaptability and to continue to proceed with caution.
Expert Roundtable: The Brand vs. Demand Marketing Dilemma
Three senior experts from PepsiCo, Suntory and WARC share their perspectives on how marketing drives sustainable growth by integrating brand and demand.
For over a decade, the role of the marketing organization has undergone a continuous evolution. It has become a growth engine with the expectation to drive greater revenue for existing businesses while also identifying, sizing and pursuing new sources of growth.
Under intense competition, businesses in Asia and across the world are faced with an urgent need to identify new growth pathways within saturated markets. Meanwhile, the pressure for financial performance, combined with the rise of digital technologies and AI, as well as the stronger capability to quantify results in demand marketing, have made the tension between long-term brand building and short-term demand generation increasingly evident.
Today’s marketers are being asked to do more with less. Balancing long-term brand building with short-term demand generation has become a pressing issue.
We interviewed three senior marketing experts from PepsiCo, Suntory Global Spirits, and WARC to share their insights about balancing brand and demand marketing:
Yan Rives Marketing Director, Suntory Global Spirits
Lizzie Li Consumer Insights Director, PepsiCo
Jenny Chan Editor, WARC
In today’s market, do brands today still need to communicate clear values or a point of view?
Jenny:Amid fierce competition, brands need strong values more than ever to build a competitive edge. Consumers are reevaluating their consumption priorities and expect brands to align with their values. A brand’s attitude must not only stay true to its DNA but also keep pace with the times. Brands need to understand the differences between subcultures, ensure authenticity and differentiation, and express empathy and understanding toward consumers.
Lizzie: I completely agree. Many brands today chase short-term performance but overlook the fact that short-term gains are built on long-term brand equity. Brands need to continuously reinforce and solidify their values to remain resilient in a fast-changing market. Simply put, short-term gains cannot exist without long-term brand building.
Yan:I believe every brand needs a clear value proposition, but not every brand needs a point of view, which must be authentic. My take is: if you don’t have a genuine point of view, don’t fabricate one. We have seen numerous brands take stances on social issues but come across as insincere. If a brand truly has a set of core beliefs and knows how to bring them to life — in a way that is authentic and true to your DNA — that’s when it becomes a powerful brand strategy.
What is your perspective on the strategy of dominating a specific sub-category for all relevant consumers, as opposed to initially focusing on a distinct group of target consumers?
Jenny: These two approaches are complementary. On one hand, identifying and capturing a key group of consumers helps brands expand market share and build associations. On the other hand, focusing on sub-categories enhances brands’ competitiveness in specific sectors. However, brands need to establish multiple category entry points (CEPs), including emotional and occasional associations. By broadening these entry points, brands can more easily become the top choice in consumers’ minds.
Yan: I think it’s important to align your strategy with the brand’s resources and market realities. In highly competitive environments where hundreds of brands vie for limited opportunities, it may be more reasonable for niche brands with limited resources to focus on winning with specific channels or consumer groups, rather than attempting to boil the ocean. Another factor to consider is whether your brand has the potential to gain unprompted advocacy — i.e., whether your customers already promote your brand on your behalf. This is often more effective in capturing niche audiences than large-scale advertising.
Lizzie: I believe the increasingly niche sub-categories are the efforts of brands seeking growth when they have little choice in a saturated market. Truly sustainable growth requires balancing both types of strategies — starting with specific audiences and addressing their needs that are more universal before expanding to a wider audience, creating traction across different audience groups. This strategy combines focus with scalability.
During an economic slowdown, when consumers are more cautious in their spending, how should brands adjust their marketing strategies?
Yan: The answer to that question depends on what you’ve been doing in the past. If your sales have been mostly fueled by brand equity, you’ll be fine – think Hermès reporting surging growth quarter after quarter. Cautious consumption is about searching for better value, which is not always equivalent to a lower price. The famous “lipstick effect” as well as the latest reports on China’s shopper behavior across various product groups, suggest that consumers want to reward or treat themselves even more when the future is no longer as certain as it used to be.
Lizzie: Absolutely. The market is oversupplied and consumers are more rational, But rationality doesn’t mean they only care about functionality. If a brand only offers functional benefits, there are too many generic, white-labeled alternatives, making it impossible for brands to charge a premium. Therefore, brands increasingly need to solidify their core assets, build emotional connections with consumers, and create a competitive “moat” around the brand. For example, while there exist many cheaper alternatives to Uniqlo, its brand philosophy of “LifeWear” resonates deeply with consumers, who still choose to buy its products.
Jenny: I’d like to add that even during a consumption downturn, brands shouldn’t rely solely on price cuts and discounts as a tactic, as this harms long-term brand loyalty. Consumers nowadays are reevaluating the balance between price, quality and service. The key question becomes: is your product truly worth its price? If the answer is yes, consumers will still find it valuable even during a downturn.
What are the key challenges in integrating brand building and demand generation? What are the experiences of your organization?
Yan: The key challenge is — and has always been — reaching the right balance in building physical and mental availability. At Suntory Global Spirits, we start by leaning on growth truths that are deeply integrated into our three-year and annual planning. Those truths provide directional guidelines on the split between demand creation and demand conversion, specific to brand life stage and nuances of the specific market. We deploy a cross-functional approach for course correction and continuous improvement, providing a forum to address topics beyond mere performance management, such as consumer feedback on innovation, challenges in specific channels, and the impact of marketing activities.
Jenny: I think the biggest challenge is balancing short-term and long-term strategies. Treating brand building and demand generation as opposites limits overall marketing effectiveness. From company culture to budget allocation and creative processes, we need to “do both,” fundamentally shifting away from an either-or mindset.
Lizzie: Integration of brand and demand is a very difficult challenge. It requires brands to create more comprehensive evaluation criteria — not just focusing on sales data but also tracking brand health. In terms of talents, besides specialists, we need more generalists. Marketing leaders also need more space for regular assessments and reflection.
What role does consumer insight play in the marketing organization?
Yan: Insight is a starting point for the work of marketers. Synthesizing insights into briefs or recommendations has become increasingly difficult as the number of sources has proliferated. It’s amazing how AI makes this process both easier and more complex at the same time. In a world of data abundance, qualified insights teams, strategists, as well as senior marketers who can foster high-quality judgment within the organization, are more important than ever.
Lizzie:The insights department is a core capability of any organization, driving the shift from a manufacturer-centric view to a consumer-centric one. In a complex market, we need to cut through the noise, identify key insights and synthesize them to create tangible growth opportunities for the organization. Data alone doesn’t speak; its true value comes from human interpretation. Staying curious and adopting an outside-in perspective is essential to truly understanding consumer needs.
Prophet’s research demonstrated that pitting brand against demand marketing limits impact. Organizations that adopt an integrated approach are more likely to drive outstanding business results. We identified six key actions:
Ensuring brand and demand teams share strategy and focus on business outcomes
United by a passion for delivering against customer needs
Integration is not about compromise, but about being great at both, and combining creativity and logic to get there
The best organizations know it won’t be easy – they expect to fail sometimes but enjoy the ride
Thinking long and short-term at the same time with measurement systems that track both
Marketers are inside of, and part of, organization ecosystems working closely with CEOs, CFOs, CTOs and sales
Prophet’s team of brand and marketing experts helps you develop holistic marketing strategies that integrate sustained brand and demand investment to create and deliver value.
Uncommon Growth is high-impact, sustainable growth that is faster, smarter, more human and more actionable—requiring organizations to increase speed to market while building the right capabilities, culture and business models to outpace disruption and drive lasting impact.
Empowered, informed and demanding customers. Relentless tech advancement and disruption. Unmanageable data volumes. Geopolitical conflict and macroeconomic volatility. Shifting competitive vectors and intensifying regulatory oversight.
Welcome to the new normal – about which there is nothing normal.
But for all the change, there’s one constant for business leaders: intense pressure to deliver growth, quarter after quarter, year after year. Given today’s extraordinary challenges and complexities, however, these business leaders now recognize that yesterday’s best practices no longer apply. In other words, uncommon times require uncommon approaches to drive uncommon growth.
So, what do we mean by uncommon growth? First and foremost, it’s high-impact growth that’s faster, smarter, more sustainable and more actionable. Breakthrough product innovations – whether from start-ups or well-established brands – are perhaps the most visible examples of uncommon growth. But these are exceedingly rare. Similarly, bold acquisitions can drive uncommon growth, but relatively few firms have the capital to pursue this option.
In mature industries with tight margins, uncommon growth can mean outpacing the competition by a point or two. Or grabbing market share via smarter marketing, more attractive offers, better experiences or new sales channels. Or reshaping a brand or core value proposition for increased relevance to changing customer behaviors. To some extent, uncommon growth is a function of boosting returns on investments in transformation and innovation programs.
Uncommon growth takes many forms. Consider how a leading drug store chain (CVS) transcended its successful retail heritage through a disruptive new home care business, with existing brand equity energizing its entry into an adjacent sector with a brighter growth outlook.
A legacy entertainment brand, PENN Entertainment, shifted to an omnichannel business model to engage more customers across a fragmented media landscape. A software provider remixed its portfolio of 100+ products for delivery via a cloud-based platform for the future. There is no singular path towards uncommon growth but despite varied success, all companies need to find ways to unlock uncommon growth today and in the future.
The Action Plan for Uncommon Growth
Unlocking uncommon growth can be as much about the “how” as the “what.” The combination of building new capabilities, securing organizational alignment and developing muscle memory can power companies to launch new products, services and experiences, devise new business models, and execute growth strategies faster and more repeatably than in the past. The priorities include:
Increasing Organizational Velocity
Uncommon growth typically starts with speed. That means shortening the time from insights to decisions and from execution to impact. And accelerating go-to-market timelines, with faster design-build-test cycles and a quicker pace for launching MVPs and releasing updates. It’s a huge leadership challenge because most businesses today simply aren’t built to keep up with rapidly shifting market demands or seize opportunities that come and go faster than many firms can act.
Taking the Holistic View
There are multiple levers leaders can adjust in pursuit of uncommon growth – and they should explore them all. Product and service offerings will be priorities, but product bundles and subscription models may move the needle. Refreshed customer experiences, with personalization and customization features, can drive significant value, too. New technology may be deployed to unlock new distribution channels or enhance specific touchpoints (e.g., Generative AI tools for tailoring recommendations and offers).
Energizing the Culture to Promote Risk-Taking and Experimentation
For many organizations, that means making collaboration and co-creation (with partners and customers and across functions) the norm, rather than an exception for special projects. Similarly, innovation must be operationalized as a business-as-usual process and function (like finance and HR). These are not easy changes to enact, but they’re necessary to remove internal and cultural barriers to growth.
It’s all about speed to growth which can only be achieved through speed to insight, speed to strategy, speed to market, speed to impact and speed to commercial scale. So why are we sharing our thoughts about uncommon growth? Because that is what current conditions require, and what the future will demand.
And because we are The Uncommon Growth Company.
Explore our solutions and services or talk to one of our experts about how we can help you, your team and your organization unlock Uncommon Growth.
Essential insights for business leaders aiming to unlock consumer-centric growth and stay ahead of the curve in 2025.
GenAI marks a turning point in digital transformation – one that is fundamentally different from any technology shift we’ve seen before. As a technology that augments intelligence and creativity, its capacity to revolutionize industries is infinite. Senior leaders across Europe are eager to tap into GenAI’s potential to drive large-scale efficiencies and expand capabilities. But what does this mean for consumers? Are businesses truly considering the impact of GenAI on consumer needs and behaviors?
As European businesses race to implement GenAI, they must center their strategies around consumers, ensuring that innovation serves not only business goals but also the evolving demands of the consumer. Placing consumers at the heart of GenAI adoption is key to achieving sustainable, uncommon growth.
Many senior leaders are excited about GenAI’s potential to drive large-scale efficiencies. Boards are focused on GenAI risks, but recognise that investments have major potential upside. Our research confirms that for businesses to win in this next wave of digital transformation, it is all about consumers.
Layla Keramat Prophet Partner
AI Adoption Trends in Europe
Data from our latest research report, The Rise of the AI-Powered Consumer, highlights that around a third of German (30%) and nearly 40% of UK consumers have embraced GenAI tools in the last six months. However, Europe lags behind other regions – Asian markets like China and Singapore report much higher adoption rates, with 60% and 56% respectively. The slower adoption can be attributed to growing skepticism and privacy concerns.
One notable trend in the European markets we surveyed is the younger demographic leading the charge. Millennials (ages 28-42) have shown the highest adoption rates, with 53% actively engaging with GenAI tools. In comparison, GenZ (ages 16-28) lags behind by 3 percentage points. Their lower enthusiasm stems from concerns over the relevance and accuracy of GenAI’s output. With millennials holding the most purchasing power today, businesses need to act now to meet their needs, or risk falling behind.
Putting Consumers at the Heart of AI Innovation
For GenAI to drive meaningful innovation, companies need to understand how European consumers are interacting with the technology. Our research shows that more than half of European consumers surveyed (and global consumers) use GenAI for both professional and personal purposes, with personal usage rates hitting 90%.
The leading use case of GenAI is entertainment – creating memes, songs and other content to share with family and friends. This trend offers brands an opportunity to engage with consumers in playful, creative ways. Take Zalando, the German e-commerce giant, for example: they’ve introduced the Algorithmic Fashion Companion (AFC), a GenAI-powered tool that provides personalized fashion recommendations, resulting in a 40% increase in average basket size.
European consumers also expect more from brands adopting GenAI. In the UK and Germany, over 70% of consumers want to use AI during the pre-purchase phase, showcasing the growing demand for AI-powered product and service exploration. Moreover, 73% of respondents view brands using GenAI as innovative, while 77% say GenAI sparks new product discoveries. It’s clear that consumers want AI to do more than just entertain – they want it to help them make informed choices.
AI and Ethical Responsibility
In Europe, there is a heightened demand for accountability and transparency when it comes to GenAI. Nearly 66% of German consumers express concerns about the ethical use of GenAI, a sentiment echoed across other European markets. Moreover, 82% of global consumers expect brands to disclose when they are using AI in their services.
The reason for this concern is clear – privacy and data security remain top priorities for European consumers. Two-thirds of consumers cite these as primary barriers to greater GenAI adoption. This is especially pronounced in Germany, where privacy laws and concerns about data misuse are particularly strict. Consumers expect businesses to take the lead in creating ethical frameworks and transparent policies for AI usage, with 80% of global respondents agreeing that it is the responsibility of companies to develop clear guidelines for GenAI.
As businesses in Europe look to unlock the full potential of GenAI, they must balance enthusiasm with caution. There is certainly a growing appetite for innovation, but the key to success lies in ensuring that these technologies enhance the consumer experience in ethical and responsible ways. This means taking seriously the need for transparency, privacy protection and clear ethical guidelines.
For European brands to thrive, they must center their GenAI strategies around consumer needs, build trust and foster long-term loyalty. By doing so, they can position themselves for uncommon growth.
Moving at the Speed of Growth: 5 Steps Toward Rapid Innovation in a Volatile Market
Growth requires proactive, strategic efforts to anticipate customer needs and adapt swiftly to ever-changing market forces.
This article was originally published on Chief Marketer.
Listening to the media speculate over what’s hindered corporate growth in recent years can feel a bit like a game of Clue. Was it the Fed in D.C. with the high interest rates? The many geopolitical conflicts? The techies in Silicon Valley with the never-ending disruption? Or just fickle customers with their constantly shifting preferences?
But in conversations with senior leaders across industries, it’s become clear that the real threat is far more insidious—and it’s coming from inside the house. A structural bias against bringing innovations to market quickly, coupled with a lack of clarity and confidence from the C-suite, is preventing companies from generating and sustaining growth.
The reality is that most businesses today simply aren’t built to meet the rapidly shifting demands of the marketplace. With leaders under constant pressure to show quarterly gains, organizations are incentivized to emphasize the short-term. Moreover, in a post-pandemic world, market opportunities are coming and going faster than companies can shift to meet them, leaving CEOs discouraged and unsure of the path ahead, while long-term strategies go obsolete before they can be acted upon.
This reality is borne out in our own research: 34% of business leaders told us their firms overemphasize short-term results, and 37% said their organization has no long-term planning process. “You’re constantly in this space of change,” one executive told us. “Plans are abandoned almost as soon as they are made. There’s no real plan because things just sort of happen.”
However, organizations that possess a few key capabilities and cultural attributes can build the muscle memory to launch new products, services and experiences, devise new business models, and execute other types of growth strategies in a timely, repeatable way. At the heart of this approach are five key capabilities that businesses must develop to unlock and sustain growth in today’s volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous marketplace.
1. Form Cross-Functional Go-to-Market (GTM) Teams for Speed to Market
Many organizations assign growth initiatives to specific departments, such as marketing or product development (“Go invent me something new!”). This approach can slow down the process, leading to missed opportunities and delayed market entry. Instead, companies must form cross-functional GTM teams that build speed and agility into the process end-to-end: Speed to insight, speed to strategy, speed to impact, and speed to capability.
This team should include members from finance, HR, technology, design and strategy. Empower these teams to launch new products quickly, with a clear mandate to deliver specific, measurable results. Because all relevant functions are represented from the start, all critical factors are addressed earlier—so products launch faster and more successfully.
Real-world example:
Despite the challenges of the pandemic, Chick-fil-A continued to innovate drive through and home delivery at the speed of light. It required partnership of multiple teams across strategy, store operations, marketing, digital, HR and finance—even working virtually. One big learning: in the face of disruption, how powerful it was to have all of the functions working together seamlessly to solve a major business issue. It’s a learning that has carried forward propelling Chick-fil-A’s growth and innovation.
2. Build a Coalition of Stakeholders for Informed Decision-Making
Effective growth execution requires more than just speed; it requires informed decision-making. This can be challenging in large organizations where decision rights are often unclear and political dynamics can delay progress. To overcome these obstacles, build a coalition of stakeholders across the organization. Align them on the growth strategy and their interdependent roles in delivering it. Their clarity and shared vision will set them up to collaborate. You’ll get faster, more informed decision-making.
Real-world example:
T-Mobile’s game-changing transformation to save (and turn around) a business included tough decisions such as eliminating contracts along with a rolling thunder of other moves. The change required C-suite collaboration around a shared set of data-driven inputs and a scenario-driven business and marketing plan.
3. Make GTM Innovation Business as Usual
To be ready to respond to new market opportunities that keep coming faster, innovation needs to become a core business capability. This means that the processes and competencies necessary for launching, operating and scaling new products need to be integrated into the organization’s everyday operations. It also means senior leaders need to cultivate a culture of risk tolerance, so the impulses for growth and organizational resilience stay in balance.
Real-world example:
Amazon is continually experimenting with GTM innovation, from its inception through the present day, including the acquisition of Whole Foods and its physical retail experiments with Five Star stores and Amazon Fresh. All are designed to take advantage of consumers’ constantly shifting needs.
4. Move at the Speed of Markets
The companies best poised to capture growth opportunities ahead of competition will be faster in three interconnected phases: insight, strategy and market execution. They will prioritize deeper understanding of customer needs, rapid translation of insights into strategic priorities, and swifter implementation. The key is to build an organization that is agile, adaptable and capable of scaling its operations to meet growing demand.
Real-world example:
Pfizer recently launched its ambitious “Pfizer for All” consumer-facing platform, a first for the company. There was roughly 15 months between the launch of an earlier idea in early 2023—vaccine-finder VaxAssist—and the launch of the far more ambitious platform, Pfizer for All, in August 2024. The approach helped test and learn before scale, working through what consumers, patients and channel partners want and need. It shows a commitment to going rapidly to market, learning fast from what works and what doesn’t, and doubling down on where there’s traction.
5. Embrace AI to Enhance Growth Capabilities
From tracking customer preferences to developing rapid prototypes, AI can help businesses move faster and more efficiently. Focus AI on improving existing capabilities and creating new opportunities in customer engagement and operational efficiency, as is the case with Walmart. The focus should be on how AI can be integrated into your company’s overall growth strategy to drive sustainable results.
Growth is no longer a byproduct of past successes; it’s a result of deliberate, strategic efforts to understand and meet the evolving needs of customers one step ahead of the competition. External forces will always be in flux. By moving at the speed of growth, companies can build an organization nimble enough, creative enough and innovative enough to stay ahead of the curve.
The Future of Hospitality: 4 Key Insights for Asia’s Travel Boom
Hotel brands are embracing personalization, technology and sustainability as Asia’s travel industry reinvents itself post-pandemic.
Tourism in Asia is going through an identity crisis. By the numbers, it all looks good, with experts predicting a complete recovery, surpassing the pre-pandemic highs. However, the typical 2025 traveler bears little resemblance to those in 2019.
Travelers in Asia now have different expectations. They have new ideas about how to enjoy life, find entertainment and spend money. They want to protect the planet. They combine work and leisure travel in new ways and crave authentic experiences over standardized hotel chains. Those changes have pushed the hospitality sector to a pivotal moment of reinvention and adaptation.
As tourism numbers rise, the opportunities are expanding fast. Tourism brands must shift their strategy to succeed, addressing four powerful trends. They’ll need to redefine all formats for richer personalization. Thinking beyond the hotel’s physical location, brands must offer diversified experiences from retail, cultural activities to entertainment which stand true to the hotel’s brand purpose. They’ll have to find new ways to use tech, becoming more human. And they’ll need to address eco-wary travelers’ rapidly evolving sustainability expectations.
A Look into Asia’s Travel Boom
Asia’s impressive tourism recovery is, in large part, driven by the reopening of China post-COVID. While domestic travel expenditure has slowed since the May holiday surge (28% growth over 2019), international travel was rebounding in full force during the golden week holiday. According to Alipay, the number of transactions made by its users in overseas markets during the first four days of the holiday (October 1-4) increased by over 60% compared to the same period in 2023. Malaysia, Korea, Thailand, Hong Kong SAR and Singapore emerged as the fastest-growing destinations for Chinese tourists.
Major hotel chains saw positive financial results globally, but a decrease in their China revenue. In part, that’s due to the oversaturation of the market, with chains focusing on price, and the softening of business travel. However, it’s also due to Chinese travelers’ evolving preferences that make the hostel and B&B sector more appealing.
India is also driving the rebound, with travel industry sources reporting that outbound travelers from India spent a record $17 billion in overseas travel, a 25% jump from the prior year. In Southeast Asia, Laos and Malaysia are up 20 percent and 17 percent, respectively, in year-over-year international travel spending.
As outbound excursions increase, countries are sharpening their offers. Japan, where visits are already well over 2019 levels, is gearing up to attract affluent tourists to lesser-known destinations, offering opportunities for an authentic experience of culture, craftsmanship and nature as a record number of foreign travelers come to the country.
Are you Ready for the Traveler of 2025?
Modern guests increasingly seek more purposeful, authentic and personalized experiences, prioritizing four key areas. They want:
Diverse and Richer Formats With Personalized Experiences
Experiential travel and cultural immersion have eclipsed the trend of checking off destinations in record time. Asian travelers are now taking their time, seeking wellness, spas, yoga activities and retreats, valuing health and relaxation in their travel experiences.
That has also given rise to a keen interest in hyper-localized boutiques or specialized resorts, whether focused on families, skiing, or spiritual offers.
Songtsam has tapped into this trend, with premium hotels designed to offer culturally immersive tours along the Yunnan-Tibet route. The Chinese hotel group brings together nature, outdoor adventure, meditation, village life and local countryside customs to form two “circuits” — geographically connected groups of properties that create a foundation for a multi-location trip. Over 90% of Songtsam’s employees are from local villages, guaranteeing a customer experience that reflects the area’s unique personality.
The growing trend of traveling for concerts and festivals fits neatly into this category. Analysts estimate Taylor Swift’s recent concerts in Singapore – six shows and the only appearances in Southeast Asia – likely brought in $370 million in tourism receipts in one week.
Cruising is also growing fast, allowing tourists to take their time and savor different regions. By 2025, cruise revenue in Asia is expected to reach $3.77 billion and grow at an annual rate of 6.17% through 2029.
Differentiated Hotel Experiences That Connect to Retail and Entertainment Platforms
Modern travelers don’t just come to stay – they want to do. And increasingly, retail and entertainment are part of that experience. While some inherent challenges exist for hoteliers working in mixed-use properties, when done well, guest-centric experiences create a value exchange that provides meaningful differentiation.
Aranya Resorts has become a trendy destination for aspiring young travelers precisely because it knows how to combine commerce, culture, wellness and food with hotels and residential. It offers Instagrammable views, a concert hall, a library, diverse restaurants, luxury hotels, and retail stores that sell hip lifestyle brands.
Even without developing properties explicitly for these connections, hotel brands can create their recipe for differentiation by partnering and collaborating across the tourism ecosystem. That may include working with transportation, credit cards, retail and experience providers. Marina Bay Sands, a luxury resort in Singapore, for example, has tie-ins with MasterCard, Singapore Airlines and the Singapore Tourism Board. These connections allow the brand to offer collaborations like fly-and-stay deals, built around culinary festivals and a Lunar New Year dragon drone show.
Such partnerships make it easy for even mainstream properties to develop distinctive packages with less common destinations.
Human Experiences, with Seamlessly Integrated Technology
Travelers demand digital excellence when traveling. It’s how they prefer to book and pay for their trips.
Forward-thinking hotels are responding by accelerating their adoption of new technologies to tailor experiences and differentiate themselves. Ji Hotel, a mid-range hotel brand by H World International, incorporates customizable lighting, sound, temperature and IoT solutions, as well as room service and delivery robots. Digital control panels are voice-enabled and connect everything to the group’s H Rewards loyalty program app.
Since travelers are increasingly open to using GenAI to plan their travel, hoteliers such as Marriott and IHG are beginning to incorporate GenAI technology in membership programs to suggest travel itineraries, dining options and shopping spots.
However, many IoT and AI capabilities can come off as impersonable, especially to the more socially conscious Gen Z.
They want digital conveniences but are also in search of human connection. The trick is using advanced tech to make customer experiences feel more human.
Regenerative Travel That Prioritizes People, Planet, and Progress
Travelers, especially younger and more affluent, are increasingly aware of tourism’s heavy impact on the local community, culture and environment. They want to travel more sustainably and are willing to pay extra for sustainable options. They want to stay in properties committed to reducing waste, shifting away from single-use plastics, preserving cultures, and giving back to communities.
Built on a secluded peninsula on a private island, Nam Nghi is a boutique hotel catering to diverse audiences, with pristine beaches surrounded by lush jungles. Prophet designed a new positioning for the Vietnamese destination, helping it appeal to affluent nature-conscious guests. Their guests want authentic experiences that have minimal environmental impact. Centered around the positioning “Nurtured by Nature,” we delivered designs and ideas for touchpoints ranging from in-room amenities, food and beverage, and wellness options to digital apps to link them all.
CX Management is the Top Agenda for Hospitality C-Levels
The theme in all four of these trends, of course, is the importance of customer experience. From the smallest boutique to the largest hotel chains, it’s important to obsessively measure how well changing audiences are reacting. That requires making CX a key function, not just a supporting role, and establishing a clear guiding principle – an experience North Star – to ensure consistent, relevant and unique customer experiences. The goal is no longer customer satisfaction but customer delight.
CX management is not to be treated as a supporting function, but as a core function anchored in the business and brand strategy.
It needs a positioning and value framework that can and must be derived from the brand.
When strongly intertwined with the R&D of travel & hospitality, CX management is decisive for identifying and driving innovations.
The measurement of CX urgently needs a strong development push beyond the classic satisfaction and recommendation KPIs.
The travel and hospitality industry in Asia is experiencing a renaissance, driven by emerging trends in personalization, sustainability and tech innovations. As consumer expectations evolve, hotels must pivot and reinvent themselves to offer unique, immersive experiences that go beyond traditional services. By focusing on these key trends, hospitality brands can not only meet but exceed the needs of the modern traveler, creating lasting customer loyalty.
How the CEO at Curative Accelerates Growth by Meeting Consumers’ Needs
Unlock. Create. Execute: A conversation about uncovering growth by delivering better health outcomes.
Growth is rarely easy – specifically, growth driven by customer interest and market demand rather than the temporary variety driven by acquisition, cost takeout or organizational restructuring.
Because markets are moving faster than ever, we believe sustainable growth results from:
Unlocking compelling customer insights to inform growth strategies
Creating relevant, impactful growth moves
Executing faster and more efficiently
Through this series of interviews with healthcare leaders, we explore the driving insights, key actions and anticipated impact of their recent growth strategies.
In this edition, we sit down with Fred Turner, chief executive officer and co-founder of Curative, to learn more about his unique vision and approach to driving change in the insurance industry.
Curative is a groundbreaking healthcare services company that created and launched the first-of-its-kind employer-based health insurance plan. Founded in 2020, Curative reengineered health insurance by providing unmatched simplicity, enhanced engagement and cost transparency with a competitive monthly premium and zero additional costs. Curative is all about building the next generation of large employer health insurance – focused on preventative health and removing barriers to care.
Fred Turner is the CEO and co-founder of Curative. Under his leadership, Curative has shifted from the leading COVID-19 testing provider to an innovator in health insurance, offering plans with no copays, no deductibles and no cost-sharing for in-network care (with the completion of a baseline visit). This model has achieved a 94% member engagement rate, far surpassing industry standards. Turner’s vision is to create a healthcare system that supports holistic patient health.
What Is the Major Unlock That Informed Your Approach and Strategy for Curative?
When Curative was founded in January 2020, we initially focused on improving sepsis outcomes but quickly pivoted to supporting COVID diagnostic testing. That work exposed us to two key learnings: one, we touched every type of payer and health plan and saw cracks in the system, and two, we learned that consumers have serious fear and anxiety when it comes to healthcare expenses. That fear may prevent them from getting care, for example a COVID test, even when COVID tests are fully covered. We knew we wanted to do something that would move the needle on U.S. healthcare, something that could drive meaningful change in the system.
“Our experience during COVID made us say, the payer dynamic is a real problem with the U.S. healthcare system, and we could build a payer that can drive preventative care and better long-term outcomes.”
We saw the untapped space, where there hasn’t been innovation for decades, as the employer market, which is where 50% of Americans get their health insurance. The U.S. has run a natural experiment over the past 10 to 15 years with High Deductible Health Plans. Fifteen years ago, about 10% of plans met the American Care Act (ACA) definition of high deductible. Today, we’re closer to 60%. Did it work? The answer is a resounding no. Consumers aren’t great at price shopping, and people don’t make rational decisions, particularly when it comes to emotional subjects such as health and their finances.
“The other substantial effect when patient cost sharing goes up is the deferral of care.”
The National Bureau of Economic Research ran a study that followed a group who moved from a low deductible to a high deductible plan over three years. In the first year, you see about a 12% reduction in spending, which looks great – like we reduced healthcare spend. The problem is when you dig into what is happening, you see people putting off primary care visits, checkups and screening tests – even though in the plan design, certain preventative screening tests, like colonoscopies, were covered at $0 out-of-pocket cost. The care that gets put off is lower acuity preventative care.
“If you have a heart attack, you’re still going to go to the hospital, no matter what your deductible is. What the high deductible plan does do is prevent you from getting the checkup that might have avoided that hospitalization.”
How Did That Insight Help You to Create the Curative Platform in a Relevant, Differentiated Way?
We’re trying to approach preventative care differently in terms of the value that we assigned to it. The typical way that an insurance plan looks at loss, or medical loss right now, is every dollar spent as $1. Whether you spend $1 on preventive care or you spend $1 in the hospital, it’s still just $1. The way that we look at it is that dollar spent on a preventative visit could avoid inpatient stays, emergency room visits or specialty drug use.
“Preventative care that keeps people well is a dollar significantly better spent than a dollar on a preventable hospital stay.”
We’re committed to making an investment upfront, to getting people engaged in their care early and then seeing that payoff downstream with lower ER, hospital or specialty drug use. Most employers get stuck in this cycle of deferred care, where the population’s health is decreasing and costs continue to go up. Curative flips the script. We make it easy for people to engage upfront. The cost sharing is zero, so there are zero out-of-pocket costs, no copays and no deductibles to go and access care – as long as you engage in a preventative health visit within the first 120 days of signing up for the plan.
“If you want people to engage with care, you have to make it really simple.”
And the only way to make it simple enough that people really understand the cost to them is to make it zeros across the board. That’s the fear that any engagement in care is bad because I might get a bill for it – that’s what we have to fight. We think the only way to reset people to see a doctor if they’re sick or in a preventive manner to avoid becoming sick is to build trust that those actions won’t cost them a dime. Our philosophy, the long game, is that we will have a higher spend in the first year because people will get the care that they need. But in the second year, we’ll get back to baseline and, by the third year, we’ll actually be saving money because this population will be healthier.
How Are You Proving That Curative Can Execute Results That Employers Are Looking For?
We’re still in the process of building trust with members and employers, but the engagement piece via a preventative visit is key. We get an hour of the member’s time to do two things: one, we aim to educate them about accessing their care through a Care Navigator session. How do they make appointments? What is a deductible? What’s a copay? How do you figure out what doctors are in-network? When should you go to the ER?
“We’re demonstrating that we want them to access the care they need versus an adversarial relationship that members often have with their health plan that doesn’t want to cover what they need.”
That kicks off the relationship in a fundamentally different way and drives a higher degree of engagement. Two, members then meet with a clinician who is looking for gaps in care. If we see a pre-diabetic patient, we want to get them to a primary care physician who’s going to manage their pre-diabetes or even reverse it, rather than letting that continue to full-on type two diabetes, where, if unmanaged, could lead to major health complications that result in tremendous expense – that’s bad for the member and for the health plan. In the longer term, we expect to be able to keep rates closer to flat by managing this care over time, rather than the typical 10% increases you’re going to get from BUCA carrier every year. We’re new to the space and want to make sure that we’re here for the long term.
“It may sometimes seem like moving the boulder of the American healthcare system is impossible, but I think with a lot of dedicated, smart people chipping away at it, piece by piece, we really can make substantial change.”
Growth has become more challenging to generate and sustain driven by customer interest and market demand. Even top performers can no longer rely on their past strategies to achieve the next phase of growth. Beyond well-known barriers like tech-driven disruption and fickle customers, less tangible factors such as lack of executive clarity and short-term thinking pose significant threats. Sustainable growth now depends on unlocking compelling customer insights, identifying impactful growth moves and executing strategies quickly and efficiently. Ready to accelerate your growth? Schedule a workshop.
How the CEO at Northwell Direct Accelerates Growth with a Clinician-First Approach
Unlock. Create. Execute: A conversation about uncovering growth by disrupting traditional models.
Growth is rarely easy – specifically, growth driven by customer interest and market demand rather than the temporary variety driven by acquisition, cost takeout or organizational restructuring.
Because markets are moving faster than ever, we believe sustainable growth results from:
Unlocking compelling customer insights to inform growth strategies
Creating relevant, impactful growth moves
Executing faster and more efficiently
Through this series of interviews with healthcare leaders, we explore the driving insights, key actions and anticipated impact of their recent growth strategies.
In this edition, we sit down with Nick Stefanizzi, chief executive officer at Northwell Direct, to learn more about the company’s origin and philosophy around growing its integrated care network.
Northwell Direct is a subsidiary of Northwell Health, one of the largest healthcare providers in New York. Established in 2020, Northwell Direct offers a direct-to-employer health care network of more than 31,000 providers and customized wellness programs to support employee health. This allows employers to offer high-quality healthcare to their employees without going through traditional insurance companies. Northwell Health utilizes Northwell Direct’s provider network for its own employee health benefits, ensuring comprehensive and cost-effective care for its workforce.
Nick Stefanizzi is the CEO of Northwell Direct, where he is responsible for the strategy, operations, growth and financial performance of Northwell Health’s direct-to-employer organization. Stefanizzi has been with Northwell Health for 16 years, serving in various roles, including assistant vice president for HR innovation and organization effectiveness as well as director of management services for Northwell’s ambulatory network.
What Is the Major Unlock That Informed Your Approach and Strategy for Northwell Direct?
Northwell Health had its own insurance company (Care Connect) that was incredibly successful – but we were not prepared for risk adjustment, so that business venture shuttered in 2018. While that was challenging, what wasn’t lost was our belief that playing in that space was the right approach. At the same time, our organization started to grow. We’re the largest private employer in the state of New York, in addition to being the largest healthcare provider. Organically, we started to get inbound inquiries from employers saying, we’re having these kinds of challenges in our employee plan – can you help us figure this out as both an employer and a provider? We saw that we had an opportunity to do something different for the communities we serve. That was really the genesis of Northwell Direct. We then built a business around that concept, not only to meet employer needs but to disrupt the payer space.
“It’s our belief that a more direct relationship between those who provide the care and those who pay for the care is beneficial, and that today, payers have inserted themselves between those two entities.”
There’s still a role for the major carriers to play, but they don’t need to sit between us, and in fact, by working together with the employers and their employees, it’s our belief that we can better manage care and drive improvements in quality and outcomes.
We only work with self-funded employers in their benefit design. In New York state, that means more than 100 employees, and we don’t carry any financial risk, as we do not offer an insurance product. We’re on the hook for performance. Our focus is on delivering value, savings, efficiency and outcomes for our employers. The other thing we didn’t do was invest in building an insurance company. There are third-party administrators that have the capabilities needed to support an employer-sponsored plan, so why not partner instead of building it ourselves and going at it alone?
“We saw a business model that was ripe for disruption and employers who were hungry for support, grappling with the challenges they’ve had with their employee population and desperate to arrest a trend that had been moving in the wrong direction for over a decade.”
We saw an opportunity to build the platform differently with partners.
In Addition to Opening a New Line of Business, What Impact Did Northwell Direct Create for Your Key Audiences?
We’ve made a concerted effort to remove the traditional denials and hurdles in this space that don’t add value or drive for the member or material savings for the employer. While we can accommodate any benefit design requirements, we have examples of clients for whom, if their employees receive care within our tier one network, there are zero prior authorizations needed. And it doesn’t lead to higher costs. There is no statistical difference in unnecessary utilization or unnecessary testing.
“We take a clinical-first approach – what does the doctor believe is necessary?”
We trust that we have providers who are going to do the right thing by the patient and by the plan, and then manage the care intensely to make sure it’s as efficient as possible. It’s about administering consistently with the benefits plan but providing clinically oriented insights into how that benefit design can be enhanced to drive the right patient behaviors and the right patient choice of the highest quality, lowest-cost providers, and then wrapping the member with support that is integrated with and endorsed by the clinician. By taking a provider-oriented approach, our engagement levels are much higher. We’re able to share the care management information back with the provider so they can take a more holistic view. And lastly, what we can do locally that the national carriers can’t is get on the ground. If we have a member who is admitted, we will send a nurse care manager to their bedside to coordinate their follow-up care, their appointments and make sure they’re clear on what happens post-discharge. You can’t do that from a contact center across the country.
“Clinical-first, integrated care management, boots on the ground and a structural approach that is different in terms of our philosophy around denials versus provider enablement – that’s what we’re doing, and it’s fundamentally different from how carriers think about this.”
How Challenging Was It to Get the Business Running, and How Will You Execute Your Growth Future Plans?
It’s hard for health systems to get into this business because it takes investment, and health systems are struggling financially. They are under enormous pressure, there are a lot of competing priorities, and it takes a lot to stand up a new venture like this.
“You cannot do this by having somebody do it off the side of their desk.”
You have to build competency and capabilities. For example, we brought in people with skill sets that traditionally don’t exist within the health system. We’re selling an incredibly complex product in the insurance space, even though we’re not an insurance company. I have licensed brokers that work for me – that skill set and those broker relationships don’t exist in health systems. You have to invest in building the appropriate infrastructure. You need talent that doesn’t necessarily exist from within the organization, and you have to build capabilities. But you don’t need to do it all. Just pick one thing that an employer might need or have a conversation with a major employer in your region and ask what they would want help with and start there. Yes, there are competing priorities, competing investments and a tremendous amount of pressure, but I believe this strategy in the long term will alleviate those pressures.
In the next five years, we will expand the field of play and be a major regional player. There’s an opportunity to grow our network and the geographic footprint of employers we serve. In addition to that growth, we’re diversifying the ways in which we partner with employers. That means new products and services. That means rolling out digital platforms to augment our clinical capabilities. That means partnering differently, even within the insurance space. We’re going to roll out our own bundles and centers of excellence.
“I believe, fundamentally, there is a national opportunity here for health systems to partner together and for us to take the work we’re doing here, to line it up with the work that Baylor is doing in Texas, what Orlando Health is doing in Florida, what Providence is doing up in Washington and California, and for us to figure out how to stitch something together that would allow us to scale nationally.”
That’s a very complicated proposition. I don’t know exactly yet how it will come together, but I believe there are enough health systems that see this as an interesting space and that there’s opportunity for us over time to figure out how to make that possible together.
Driven by customer interest and market demand, growth has become even more challenging to generate and sustain. Even top performers can no longer rely on their past strategies to achieve the next phase of growth. Beyond well-known barriers like tech-driven disruption and fickle customers, less tangible factors such as lack of executive clarity and short-term thinking pose significant threats. Sustainable growth now depends on unlocking compelling customer insights, identifying impactful growth moves and executing strategies quickly and efficiently.
Ready to accelerate your growth? Schedule a workshop.
