Companies have long struggled to generate sustained profitable growth - and few have succeeded. Time after time, new initiatives and projects are rolled out with great fanfare only to end up abandoned and remembered only as expensive flops. Yet for the small handful of companies that have managed to drive growth consistently - even through tough times - the payoff is great. How do they do it? In Discovery-Driven Growth, Rita McGrath and Ian MacMillan challenge what you thought you knew about managing growth. They explain that capitalizing on uncertain opportunities requires a starkly different mind-set than pursuing strategy in your core business. In fact, the very same practices that work for "business as usual" can be lethal when your challenge is growth. For instance, intelligent failures can add more value than predictable successes, and low-cost experimentation trumps analysis. Based on extensive research and the authors' combined thirty years of experience, Discovery-Driven Growth provides a breakthrough system for managing strategic growth. You will learn how to identify and prioritize your company's full portfolio of opportunities - from new product lines to entirely new businesses. The authors then show how to best execute specific initiatives, test major project assumptions, and develop a culture that values disciplined experimentation and learning over meeting mindless and unrealistic goals. Tools for dealing with each challenge are backed by examples from companies, from small firms to global giants, that have successfully put these methods into practice. The discovery-driven approach will dramatically change how you lead strategic growth. Using it, your company can greatly improve the success of new strategic initiatives, significantly reduce growth costs, minimize surprises, and know when to disengage from questionable projects before too much money is spent. With Discovery-Driven Growth, McGrath and MacMillan offer managers everywhere a time-tested bl