Understanding Growth (Part 1 of 8)

This is the start of a new video series discussing the important business concept of Growth. Watch now!

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VIDEO SUMMARY

Growth is a concept that not a lot of people understand. Surprisingly, they do not talk about it a lot in business school, because there is not a whole lot of research done on the subject of growth. And so when you ask people the question, “What is growth?” you get a wide range of answers, none of which are very good. Let us ask some more questions. What causes growth? How do you find growth? What are the characteristics of growth? How do you measure growth? How do you make growth happen? No one has good answers to these questions.

When you get down to it, growth is something everyone wants, but no one knows how it works. Growth is the area that I focus on in my own research. I have worked in many high growth companies, and so I know that there are very practical decisions in running a business that benefit by understanding how growth works. If you want to know about my research, I have written a summary called “On Wolves And Finance” which you can get on Amazon. The link is on my website WolvesAndFinance.com which is in the description box below.

I am not going to get into any details in this video. What I want to focus on is the big picture. The big picture is that growth exists. If you think about business history over the last 5,000 years, it is a story of long-term economic growth. 5,000 years ago, humans did not even have written language, and now we have smart phones. If we were to graph the GDP of the world from caveman time to now, it would be a long beautiful upward curve of growth.

Of course there have been ups and downs. We have had market crashes and market booms. But overall, we see a long-term trend of growth. We had a long period called the Dark Ages, but growth did not stop. Humanity kept growing during the Renaissance.

Now some people might say that growth happens because population is increasing, but that does not explain the numbers. If you put population growth and economic growth side by side, you see that economic growth far exceeds population growth. Productivity has been increasing, which is why humans have been able to avoid so many over-population problems.

Growth is a fundamental characteristic of economic activity. Now you might say that is ridiculous, because of course there are businesses out there that are not growing. But that does not mean the growth does not exist. It just means the growth has moved somewhere else. Your business is just not participating in the growth. That is why it is so important that business people understand how to identify growth.

If you are a business person, understanding growth is a fundamental part of your job. How do you make your business more productive? You are constantly looking around for opportunities to improve and add more value to your community. You are a piece of this 5,000 year long story of continuous growth. That is your job. You are not just an accountant or a finance professional. You are a driver of growth, to enable humanity to reach the next level of productivity.

We are going to get into the reasons why growth exists in later videos. In these videos, I am going to be breaking down the concept of growth into helpful insights you can use in your business. The only place you are going to find these ideas is on this YouTube channel WolvesAndFinance. For now, you just need to realize that growth exists. It is a part of business. It might be affecting your financial statements and you do not even know it. The more you can understand growth, it allows you to make better business decisions and unlock your future potential.

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Neither Zach De Gregorio or Wolves and Finance Inc. shall be liable for any damages related to information in this video. It is recommended you contact a CPA in your area for business advice.