OUR BEST NEW IDEAS FOR THE C-SUITE

Welcome to the latest edition of the CEO Shortlist, a biweekly newsletter of our best ideas for the C-suite. This week, we feature our latest research on how forward-thinking executives are creating meaningful growth by developing new ventures. We appreciate the opportunity to connect and hope you find our perspectives novel and insightful. Please let us know what you think! You can reach us at Alex_Panas@mckinsey.com and Axel_Karlsson@mckinsey.com. Thank you.

—Alex and Axel

Choose your own venture. It’s been a challenging few years for global companies: sky-high geopolitical tensions have arrived on the back of soaring inflation, tight capital conditions, and the unprecedented disruptions of the pandemic. But business leaders are rising to meet today’s particular challenges with hope and resilience. How do we know? Leap by McKinsey asked more than 1,100 of them as part of the latest McKinsey Global Survey. Two-thirds of the CEOs we spoke with rank new-venture building as the top strategic move they expect to make in the next 12 months. 

This type of forward thinking—not letting fear impede the pursuit of opportunity—makes sense from an anecdotal perspective. But there’s also hard data to back it up: according to our research, organizations that allocate 20 percent of their growth capital to new ventures achieve revenue growth that’s 2.0 percentage points higher than that of companies that don’t. For organizations worth more than $1 billion, this incremental growth rises to 2.5 percentage points. 

We hope you find these ideas inspiring and helpful. See you next time with more McKinsey ideas for the CEO and others in the C-suite. 

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