(Yicai Global) June 4 -- Technologies are advancing rapidly nowadays, and the conventional business growth pattern is losing its efficacy, so companies are faced with one common question: how to achieve real growth. A firm must build a new scheme and work out solutions based on advanced business philosophy, Ye Han, strategic consulting director of the consulting department of Kantar China, said in a recent exclusive interview with Yicai Global.

Advanced Business Philosophy Is Only Way for Real Growth 

Advanced business philosophy is key to a company achieving real growth. A firm with advanced business philosophy must not give priority to its business pattern but the significance of its existence to its targeted clients.

A company will make the right development strategies and decide an appropriate business pattern only if it figures out its significance to its clients, Ye noted.

Internet firms have advantages in using new technologies to fight the growth challenges, but they are essentially the same as conventional ones, Ye believes, saying they both need to find earners, develop them to occupy market share and cut costs to make further profits. The only difference between them is they have different mindsets, a conventional one and a growth leader one, in overcoming challenges to achieve real growth, she added.

The conventional mindset focuses on businesses, putting efforts into how to grab market share from rivals to expand business and how to cut cost when growth hits a bottleneck to make a profit or make more profits.

The growth leader mindset, however, is different. It pays attention to what services a firm will offer to its clients and how to solve problems for them, which will result in client growth, enhance their loyalty to the firm and redefine the market and thus naturally bring or increase profit for the firm.

Advanced business philosophy will necessarily lead to a new scheme for a firm. Kantar has visited 73 countries and areas, interviewed over 500 industry leaders, collected more than 1,500 effective questionnaires from companies' executives, studied quotations and references of over 3,000 business publications, consulting firms' reports and academic papers and finally concluded cornerstones for real growth which form a new scheme to achieve sustainable income growth.

Cornerstones for Real Growth

Kantar's survey targets markets with different cultures, fields and grade of maturity and cover all functions, levels and industries, searches and analyzes users' blogs, bulletin board systems and online dialogs via Discover Artificial Intelligence. It finally summed up seven cornerstones for real growth which form a new scheme to achieve sustainable income growth. These cornerstones are an abundant market, an open culture, multiple models, anticipative organization, an evolving experience, as well as whole-brained and humanized growth.

The whole-brained mindset means a firm needs not only a conventional mindset which includes marketing but can also use technologies such as big data to make data-based decisions and guide the conventional business pattern based on innovation to achieve integration of technology and innovation.

The whole-brained mindset can reduce a firm's cost of trial and error, Ye stated. Any firm bears risks of error when making decisions. A firm relying only on limited data such as market survey results to reduce the risk but can greatly lower such risk in the era of science and technology with the whole-brained mindset which requires the firm to have a good understanding of technologies as well as being proficient in business.

An abundant market means a firm must think out of the box, extend the whole market and focus on the future instead of the existing market. She took Yunnan Baiyao Group as an example.

Yunnan Baiyao was founded as a pharmaceutical firm. But when the market became saturated, the firm expanded to provide users with healthcare options and has rolled out many non-pharmaceutical products of which Yunan Baiyao toothpaste has been a huge success.

The Role of "People" in a Firm's Development

A firm's development relies on "people", Ye stated, saying "people" means a firm's users, employees and the social group where the firm is. These three respects must be closely interconnected. A firm must link its own development goals to user growth, employee growth and social development and build assessment and incentive plans to achieve real sustainable growth.

Thus, a firm's executives must have strong business ability, courage and the most importantly an open and humble attitude, she added, saying therefore they can not only hear views of all sides, grasp market changes timely and master new technologies quickly to develop a whole-brained mindset to facilitate reform in the firm and achieve real growth.