Challenges facing hypergrowth firms have a huge impact in today’s global economy. From talent shortages to regulatory impediments, growth challenges are a consistent management priority. Hypergrowth firms have often found unique solutions to these challenges from which we may draw corresponding insights. Through discussions with its members and partners, The World Economic Forum has identified best practice strategies from hypergrowth firms, articulated by their management teams.
This Forum project is a collaboration with EY and addresses the following objectives:
- Identifying key challenges in rapidly growing companies across regions and industries
- Discerning the best practices that allow for successful response to high-growth challenges
- Engaging CEOs and other high-growth companies with their senior leadership teams in dialogues to identify and develop solutions to high-growth challenges
- Developing impactful stakeholder management practices (e.g., with employees, boards, regulators) as fast-growing firms encounter challenges
By examining risks and trends affecting rapidly growing enterprises, analysing data from surveys, conducting interviews with CEOs, their senior management teams and other experts, this project highlights decisions that characterise how succesful firms respond to high-growth obstacles. As an essential part of the Forum’s mission, the role of stakeholder management in these scenarios is closely considered in terms of its impact and application to high-growth challenges.
Comprehensive and global sample of growth
Our study consisted of nearly 200 companies. 18% of participating companies represented rapid growth, defined as between 20% – 40% compound annual growth rate (CAGR), while 33% of participating companies had experience with hypergrowth, defined as > 40 % CAGR. The remaining 49% of companies could be classified as normal growth, <20 % CAGR. This particular sample of global companies represents annual revenues from $100m – >$1bn (US) and includes a wide variety of industries, regions and organization sizes.
