Menu
Log in


Free Course: Grow to Greatness

  • 20 Jan 2014
  • Online
https://www.coursera.org/course/growtogreatness

Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Private Businesses, Part I

Edward D. Hess

This course focuses on the common growth challenges faced by existing private businesses when they attempt to grow substantially.

Workload: 4-6 hours/week 
Watch intro video

Sessions:
Jan 20th 2014 (5 weeks long) Sign Up
Future sessions
 

About the Course

Most entrepreneurship courses focus on how to start a business. Few focus on the next big entrepreneurial inflection point: how do you successfully grow an existing private business? This is the focus of this Course. It is based on the instructor's research and thirty years of real-world experience advising private growth companies. 

This Course will challenge how you think about growth; give you tools to help you plan for growth, assess the preconditions to grow, and manage the risks of growth. You will study stories of how five different private businesses faced their growth challenges. 

Growth, if not properly managed, can overwhelm a business, destroying value and in many cases even causing the business to fail. However, the research shows that every growth business faces common challenges. You can learn from others' experienceundefinedyou do not have to "reinvent the wheel".

The Course format is case based. Each case tells a compelling story. You will learn from Julie Allinson, Susan Fellers, Dave Lindsey, Parik Laxinarayan and Eric Barger. In addition, each week, we will discuss a different content theme. In Weeks and 2 and 5, you will engage in Workshops where you will be asked to use and apply the Course tools and concepts to create growth strategies for two different real-life businesses. You will have the opportunity to create a Course Community of fellow-students to learn from each other as the Course progresses. 

You will learn about the: "3 Myths of Growth"; the "Truth About Growth";  why growth is like "Mother Nature"; the "Gas Pedal" approach to growth; the all important "4 Ps" of how to grow; and how to scale a business strategically.

Course Syllabus

Please see Syllabus for further detail on weekly reading and assignments.

Week 1: The "Truth About Growth":The common beliefs that all growth is good; bigger is always better; and businesses must "grow or die" are not true. Growth can be good and growth can be bad. There is no scientific basis for the axiom "grow or die". It is a fiction. You will lean from Julie Allinson, the founder of Eyebobs, who has built a successful business selling stylish “reading glasses for the irreverent and slightly jaded.” Julie approached growth realistically and understood its value creation and destructive powers. You will learn how she faced manufacturing, sales, and people challenges while building a high growth businessundefineda cool story.

Week 2: Workshopundefined“Are You Ready for Growth?”:  Using the Growth Risks Assessment Tool from Week 1, you will meet and advise Susan Fellers, the founder of 3 Fellers Bakery. Susan started a business baking gluten-free products when she was diagnosed with celiac disease. Her start-up was successful, and she needs your help because she has had so many growth alternatives and she does not know which to pursue. You will be asked to create a growth plan for her. 

Week 3: The 4 Ps of GrowthundefinedPlanning, Prioritization, Processes and Pace: Using the Defender Direct story, we will learn to better manage the chaos of growth; find a business's strategic focus; how to choose which daily "fires" to put out first; how to create replicable processesundefined“leave a fire extinguisher behind"; and how to pace growth letting "up on the growth gas pedal". Dave Lindsey is our business builder this week, and you will trace his story from starting his business in his home to today being a national, privately owned home installation company generating well in excess of $300M (USD) in revenue with healthy profit numbers. 

Week 4: The Four Ways To Grow a Business: This week you will learn about the different ways to growundefinedimprovements, innovation, scaling, and strategic acquisitionsundefinedwith a focus on growth boosters: how to get more customers and sell more products and/or services to existing customers more efficiently. Enchanting Travels, a travel company based in India, is our story this week. You will learn how they built the foundation of their business to scale their focused customer value proposition so they could grow geographically to Africa, South America, and Asia. The story presents a big decision for you: should they franchise their business?

Week 5: Workshopundefined“Creating a Growth Plan": This week you will read about Eric Barger's challenge: how to take a business that has had little growth selling a commodity product and turn it into a high growth business. You will be asked to create a growth plan for Eric. And after doing that you will learn what Eric did to quadruple his business in three years. 

Recommended Background

The only prerequisite for this Course is an interest in learning about how privately-owned entrepreneurial businesses grow. The following people will find this course helpful: students at all levels, private business owners, managers of private businesses, employees of private businesses, and people interested in growth, economic development, and job creation.

Suggested Readings

All of the required Course readings are listed in the Syllabus and will be provided for free by the University of Virginia Darden School Foundation.

Additional reading that you might find helpful for the Course include:

1. Edward D. Hess, Grow to Greatness: Smart Growth for Entrepreneurial Businesses, Stanford, CA: Stanford Business Books, 2012, which is the book that this Course is based on. 

2. Edward D. Hess and Charles F. Goetz, So! You Want to Start a Business? Upper Saddle River, NJ: FT Press, 2008. This book was written for people who want to start a business. It focuses on the eight common reasons why start-ups fail and how to increase your probability of avoiding those mistakes.

3. Edward D. Hess, The Road to Organic Growth: How Great Companies Consistently Grow Marketshare From Within, New York: McGraw Hill, 2007. This book is based on a study of consistent high organic growth U.S. public companies and their defining characteristicsundefinedthe six keys to their success. Company stories include Sysco, Stryker Corporation, Outback Steakhouse, Best Buy Co., Inc., TSYS, Tiffany & Co., and American Eagle Outfitters, Inc..

My additional list of good reads (not required):

1. Peter F. Drucker, Innovation and Entrepreneurship, New York: HarperBusiness, 1993.

2. Michael E. Gerber, The E-Myth Revisited: Why Most Small Businesses Don’t Work and What to Do About It, New York: HarperCollins, 2001.

3. Neil C. Churchill and John W. Mullins, “How Fast Can Your Company Afford to Grow?” Harvard Business Review, 79, no. 5 (2001): 135-42.

Course Format

Videos and Workshops
Each week consists of videos made for the Course in short segments of approximately 10 to 25 minutes each. The videos discuss the articles and case studies to be read prior to the class. There are in-video quizzes embedded within the segments to evaluate your understanding of the concepts. You may proceed at your own pace. 
There are also Workshop exercises, in which you have the opportunity to use the concepts discussed in the readings and videos to determine a course of action for a real, private business growth challenge. After completing the exercises, you will learn what action the business actually took and whether it was successful. 

There is a (non-optional) final exam of multiple choice questions. 

Discussion Forums
You may choose to create course communities through the Discussion Forums, which will allow you to learn from your classmates. Communities can be formed based on your country of residence or based on the type of business you own or want to learn about. The purpose of the community is to provide a forum for you to learn from each other. It’s an opportunity for you create and grow together. 

Instructor Engagement
I will hold "office hours" every Wednesday morning during the Course from 10:00am to 11:30am EST where I will be on the Course Discussion Forum to answer questions, chat and respond to other conversations. I will also hold a "live" streaming session of Office Hours at least once during the Course. 



©  2020 Ohio Program Evaluators' Group

www.OPEG.org

Powered by Wild Apricot Membership Software