Your New Chief Growth Officer May Be a Data Mining Algorithm

Most of the chief growth officers I know have been hired to unlock future organic growth potential by evolving the culture and structure of their respective organizations. Organic growth (as opposed to growth by acquisition) is especially hard for mature brands. Once your product is widely distributed and you've fought for all the retail facings you can fight for, velocity becomes the key growth driver. Let's assume, for this writing, that the CMO is awesome and that the marketing department is totally on top of line extensions, product attributes and programs to optimize velocity. Let's also assume that there are fully optimized advertising campaigns driving awareness of the marketing programs and that everything that traditional marketing and advertising can do is being done.