Strategies for Profitable Growth

This book is scheduled for publication in September 2025

Preamble

Books on business strategy written for an SME audience tend to be narrowly focused and frequently skim the surface of essential or complex subject areas. Many are overly simplistic and often superficial.

Markets and businesses are complex, and creating long-term, sustainable, profitable strategies is challenging. Acknowledging these realities is the first step towards building high-performance business outcomes.

Embracing knowledge and building competencies are essential for survival and growth in today’s highly competitive markets. Within complexity lies opportunity, and identifying and surmounting challenges creates the foundations for sustainable, profitable growth.

From this competitive platform, SME companies should have their strategies, plans, and contingencies in place. This is precisely what SME Business Manifesto: Strategies for Profitable Growth addresses. We discuss the theories, concepts, frameworks, processes, and tools to guide smart managers running intelligent companies toward building long-term SME business strategy success.

The SME Business Manifesto

Extensive management research (including numerous meta-analysis articles that statistically examine data from several independent studies on the same subject) has proven that a deep understanding of the following areas of management theory and practice can significantly contribute to long-term domestic and international business strategy success.

- - Business environment sensitivity: Identifying opportunities and off-setting threats. Scanning and sensing external market forces to set strategic priorities and monitor ‘red flags’.
  - Analysing global and domestic markets: Customer insights and competitor intelligence.
  - Innovation and entrepreneurship: Dynamic pathways to growth and high performance.
  - Strategic marketing: Selecting and serving target market segments effectively and efficiently.
  - Strategic brand management: Building and sustaining a competitive edge.
  - Integrated marketing communications: Managing customer relationships.
  - Planning processes: Designing competitively differentiated ‘Go-to-Market’ plans.
  - Financial planning: Many SMEs fall into the ‘overtrading trap’, often becoming victims of their own success. Financial planning competencies are essential for managing profitable growth, including building relationships with independent accountants and financial institutions like banks.
  - Building customer-focused (external) organisational capabilities: Developing distinctive capabilities, exploiting strengths, and neutralising weaknesses. It also involves implementing creative SME business strategies with efficient operations management.
  - Leadership: Many SMEs remain small, often intentionally and frequently due to a lack of support structures (e.g. financial expertise) to assist their growth. Business leadership competencies are essential for managing profitable growth.

Please click/tap the SME Business Manifesto: The Book tab of the Main Menu for deep insights into the subject and topic arenas that these broad management disciplines embrace. Each chapter in the book is dedicated to one of them.

SME Business Strategy

Frontline issues of SME Business Strategy relate directly to the ‘Three Cs’ of competitive markets and the relationships between them:

1. 1. Customers.
  2. Competitors.
  3. Capabilities.

Successfully managing these dynamics will ultimately be determined by addressing the following five key SME business strategy ‘themes’:

1. 1. Delivered stakeholder value.
  2. Strategic clarity.
  3. Operational excellence.
  4. Flexible organization.
  5. Innovation & entrepreneurship.

These themes permeate all chapters of SME Business Manifesto: Strategies for Profitable Growth. The book combines SME business strategy principles with proven frameworks, processes, and tools to guide companies toward building sustainable competitive advantages.