The Missing Discipline Behind Failure to Scale

Companies make significant investments in developing and incubating new business initiatives, but too few follow a rigorous path to scaling their ventures

- Andy Binns and Christine Griffin

IN 2018, BEST BUY ANNOUNCED that it would enter the health market. It was an unexpected move for a consumer electronics retailer, but it was consistent with then-CEO Hubert Joly's passionate advocacy for making Best Buy a company with a deep sense of purpose. Starting with a focus on helping the elderly to age safely at home, the company broadened the strategy to make Best Buy Health a provider that "enables care at home for everyone." It was also a lucrative opportunity: Home health is forecast to be a $265 billion market by 2025.

Over the next few years, Best Buy Health tested its key assumptions about the opportunity, seeking out the sweet spot that would allow it to build a new business to sit alongside the company's existing retail franchise. By 2022, it was a $525 million business, projected to grow at a 35% to 45% compound annual growth rate through 2027. The initiative created a new growth vector for its parent company and gave it a measure of resilience in the turbulent consumer retail sector.

Best Buy succeeded where many companies fail. It moved through the three innovation disciplines required to build new businesses: ideation, incubation, and scaling. It came up with a new idea for solving the customer problem of aging safely at home, incubated it by running in-market experiments to test value propositions, and then scaled it to a revenuegenerating business unit. This is a relatively rare accomplishment. Our research finds that while 80% of companies claim to ideate and incubate new ventures, only 16% of companies successfully scale them.