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Why Adding More Products Isn’t Always the Best Way to Grow

Harvard Business Review

Back in 2006, McDonald’s saw its growth stall. They had to work in sequence, meaning they had to streamline the operation first — before they could launch their new growth effort. Justin Case/Getty Images. But sales hardly budged. Finally, in 2016, it took a new tack.

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Recommended Resources – An Interview with Paul Leinwand and Cesare Mainardi, authors of The Essential Advantage

Strategy Driven

To demonstrate it, we’ve examined a number of industries and mapped the level of capabilities coherence in the portfolio of each of the major players against their operating margins over the past five years. Companies today operate in a business environment that encourages incoherence. We call this measure the ‘coherence premium.’

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Some of the Most Successful Platforms Are Ones You’ve Never Heard Of

Harvard Business Review

These card networks were allowed to charge their members just enough to cover cost and provide working capital. MasterCard IPO’d in 2006, and Visa followed two years later. Around the world, though, many countries still have domestic payment networks that operate as not-for-profit platforms.

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