Grow: How Ideals Power Growth and Profit at the World's Greatest Companies [Deckle Edge] [Hardcover]

Jim Stengel (Author)

Book Description

Release date: December 27, 2011

Ten years of research uncover the secret source of growth and profit …

Those who center their business on improving people’s lives have a growth rate triple that of competitors and outperform the market by a huge margin. They dominate their categories, create new categories and maximize profit in the long term.

Pulling from a unique ten year growth study involving 50,000 brands, Jim Stengel shows how the world's 50 best businesses—as diverse as Method, Red Bull, Lindt, Petrobras, Samsung, Discovery Communications, Visa, Zappos, and Innocent—have a cause and effect relationship between financial performance and their ability to connect with fundamental human emotions, hopes, values and greater purposes.   In fact, over the 2000s an investment in these companies—“The Stengel 50”—would have been 400 percent more profitable than an investment in the S&P 500.  

Grow is based on unprecedented empirical research, inspired (when Stengel was Global Marketing Officer of Procter & Gamble) by a study of companies growing faster than P&G.  After leaving P&G in 2008, Stengel designed a new study, in collaboration with global research firm Millward Brown Optimor.  This study tracked the connection over a ten year period between financial performance and customer engagement, loyalty and advocacy.

Then, in a further investigation of what goes on in the “black box” of the consumer’s mind, Stengel and his team tapped into neuroscience research to look at customer engagement and measure subconscious attitudes to determine whether the top businesses in the Stengel Study were more associated with higher ideals than were others.
 
Grow thus deftly blends timeless truths about human behavior and values into an action framework – how you discover, build, communicate, deliver and evaluate your ideal. Through colorful stories drawn from his fascinating personal experiences and “deep dives” that bring out the true reasons for such successes as the Pampers, HP, Discovery Channel, Jack Daniels and Zappos,  Grow unlocks the code for twenty-first century business success.

Editorial Reviews

Review

“By combining a scientist's rigor with a storyteller's gifts, Jim Stengel has produced a brilliant, must-read book supremely suited to our times.” —Arianna Huffington
 
“When you start reading Grow, you may well feel a little skeptical about the ideal and its bottom-line value.  But you’ll soon become intrigued – and then utterly convinced.  Jim Stengel shares his beliefs and his experience with a generosity bordering on the reckless; and has the hard, clean numbers to bear his teachings out.” —Sir Martin Sorrell, CEO,  WPP   
 
“Grow is a tool kit for turning the power of ideals…into competitive advantage and sustainable growth.” —Robert A. McDonald, chairman, president, and CEO, Procter & Gamble
 
“A landmark book tailor-made for the times!” —Tom Peters, coauthor of In Search of Excellence

“ ... A new, powerful model for business. ... A must-read ... for all business leaders.”  —Sheryl Sandberg, COO, Facebook
 
“This breakthrough book, filled with original ideas and engaging stories, will inspire you to rethink what truly matters to your company and career. " —William C. Taylor, founding editor, Fast Company, bestselling author of Practically Radical

“Jim Stengel shows quite conclusively the power of galvanizing your company around a noble cause. It’s a great way to think about your business!” —David C. Novak, Chairman and CEO, Yum! Brands, Inc.
 
“In this fascinating book…I personally discovered ideas that are exactly what we need in today’s business environment.” —Maurice Lévy, chairman and CEO, Publicis Group
 
“Jim Stengel is a pioneer. Not only has he cracked the code on growth, unlocking the mysteries of what drives supercharged performance, he gives us something more profound. When you truly and measurably improve other people’s lives, your life and the life of your business and brand improves exponentially. Mystery solved. Truth unleashed.” —Roy Spence, chairman and cofounder, GSD&M; CEO and cofounder, The Purpose Institute; and author of It’s Not What You Sell, It’s What You Stand For

About the Author

As Global Marketing Officer from 2001 to 2008, Jim Stengel led the effort to leverage higher ideals in brands throughout Procter & Gamble. Since 2008 he has been CEO of The Jim Stengel Company, a think tank and consultancy conducting proprietary research, generating thought leadership and applying his ideals-driven framework to drive business growth. He is also an adjunct professor at the UCLA Anderson School of Management, and serves on the boards of directors of Motorola Mobility and AOL  Jim has published in Harvard Business Review and was recently named to Fortune magazine’s First Executive Dream Team. Jim and his wife Kathleen live in Cincinnati, Ohio and Coronado, California.

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Product Details

• Hardcover: 336 pages
• Publisher: Crown Business (December 27, 2011)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 0307720357
• ISBN-13: 978-0307720351
• Product Dimensions: 6.1 x 1.3 x 9.2 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.3 pounds (View shipping rates and policies)
• Average Customer Review: 4.5 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (12 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #127,051 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Most Helpful Customer Reviews

11 of 13 people found the following review helpful

1.0 out of 5 stars Bad science, no practical value December 28, 2011

By Byron Sharp

Format:Kindle Edition|Amazon Verified Purchase

Roman Generals used to consult the pecking patterns of chickens to decide whether to go into battle or not. According to Stengel's method this was the reason for the success of the Roman Army in its day.

Four second-year MBA students looked only at 50 top performing firms to see if they had, in their opinion, strong ideals (as their instructors believed). Unsurprisingly they 'discovered' what their instructors told them would exist (page 34).

Marketing consultant Jim Stengel seems a nice guy, he wants us to be passionate about our business and to feel that there is a greater purpose than simply making money. Few would disagree. But he also claims to have discovered the secret to sustained super profits - based on a flawed study dressed up as science. The`Stengel Study' makes the same mistakes as earlier pop management books that claimed to uncover the secret of sustained financial success. Professor Philip Rosenzweig's "The Halo Effect: ... and the Eight Other Business Delusions That Deceive Managers" exposes these mistakes.

To detect factors that might cause financial success Stengel should at least compared carefully matched samples of both successful and unsuccessful firms, and developed hard objective measures of strategy - not relied almost entirely on interviews with experts. Also, to avoid confirmation bias, the researchers who described the firms and their strategies should not have been aware of which were the successful and unsuccessful ones. And finally, any resulting theories should be tested against the future performance of the firms. Otherwise what looks like science turns out to be simply a story.

This book doesn't predict which company will do well, and already a number of Stengel's outstanding 'ideal-driven' companies have floundered.

The success of brands (and the large corporations behind them) is far more complex than Stengel's book and its predecessors claim.

11 of 14 people found the following review helpful

3.0 out of 5 stars Good Case Studies January 18, 2012

By Jiang Xueqin

Format:Hardcover

For readers of "Built to Last, " "Grow" offers nothing new. This book also argues that business success requires a leader's ability to articulate a vision, build the company and brand around that vision. What this book does offer are a lot of useful case studies as well as anecdotes that illuminate the main messages.

The main fault with this book is like any business book it tries to distill the formula for business success into a general formula that can be applied everywhere. A great business is great because of great people, and great people are rare -- and that's just an unfortunate fact of life.

3 of 4 people found the following review helpful

5.0 out of 5 stars Makes Me Think January 5, 2012

By R. Siegel

Format:Hardcover|Amazon Verified Purchase

I am in a professional services field and did not consider myself a "marketer"; having said that I now recognize that I market my services daily to my clients. I'm only halfway through the book, but so far I have found Grow to be thought-provoking and insightful. I hope to apply many of the ideas in Grow to my practice.