Growth Rings

Businesses can take one of four paths to growth: They can acquire new customers, increase loyalty and new spend, innovate new products and services or enter new markets. One of the oldest ways to measure growth is through Dendrochronology, or tree-ring dating; and visualizing a slice of a company's history as tree rings allows us to identify some of the key paths they have used to drive growth over time.

When we can clearly see these paths, it's possible to understand where a company's focus has lied, how they have (or haven't) changed their growth strategies, and where they have been most successful. We call these cross-sections Growth Rings.

We've mapped the Growth Rings of three leading companies to illustrate the four paths to growth, and to help inspire growth in other corporations.

What we like most about this project is that we believe no one has ever visualized the complex nature of a company's growth in such a simple, beautiful way.