Your digital transformation or its growth strategy is delivering results. Customer experiences are improving, operations are becoming more efficient, data is becoming commercialized and AI is opening new possibilities. But here's the question I believe more leadership teams should be asking: Are we simply making today's business better, or empowering our people and capabilities to create tomorrow's growth? Because technology can enable innovation. But it takes people, the right mindset and a willingness to change how business gets done to turn those possibilities into new commercial value.
The Growth Engine Series: Connect. Operate. Unlock.
Building a digital growth engine isn’t a one-and-done project. In this three-part series, I share my experience and perspective on how digital hungry businesses and enterprises connect digital capabilities and people to turn them into measurable commercial value, results and unlock new opportunities for growth.
- PART 1 — Connect: Building the Next Growth Engine: I explore how connecting Digital, Data, Technology and AI around customer needs creates stronger relationships, smarter experiences and new growth opportunities.
- PART 2 — Operate: Making the Growth Engine Work: Learn how leaders align strategy, people, technology and customer intelligence through a Digital and AI-ready operating model to improve execution and deliver measurable commercial results.
- PART 3 — Unlock: Beyond Optimization — Turning Digital Capabilities into Growth: Continue below where I explore how businesses build on those capabilities to identify unmet customer needs, create new products, services and revenue opportunities, and scale profitable growth.
In the previous Part 2 article, Making the Growth Engine Work, I explored how a business or enterprise can connect strategy, people, data, technology, automation and AI through a stronger operating model to deliver measurable business value.
But once that growth engine has taken root and is showing signs of growth and performance, a bigger question emerges:
Are we simply making today’s business better, or building the capabilities to create tomorrow’s growth?
I’ve seen leadership become so focused on delivering technology roadmaps and improving existing processes that they overlook what those investments could make possible next.
More times than not it depends on where the pendulum has swung for who leads the Digital mandate.
Has the pendulum swung the digital mandate under the COO, which is laser focussed on operational excellence, efficiencies and ROCI.
Or has the pendulum swung to the other side with the digital mandate driven by the CMO office, who is steering it from both operational gains to do more with less, but also on whether it is generating more demand, more leads or more conversions.
A strong Digital function can bring these priorities together, acting as a bridge between business leaders and, much like a conductor leading an orchestra, aligning different teams around shared customer and commercial outcomes.
This structure is where a Digital team can thrive to be the translator between both a CMO and COO and others structure and their priorities, and functions as a conductor is to an orchestra to bring all the teams or groups together to serve their needs.
If the pendulum swings too far to one side, while value can be realized, Digital has missed it enabling its full potential.
Yes, efficiency matters. But efficiency isn’t innovation, and innovation doesn’t automatically create profitable growth.
The bigger opportunity is turning existing capabilities, customer relationships and intelligence into new products, services, evolve new ways of working revenue opportunities and competitive advantages.
1. Decide Where the Next Growth Will Come From
Not every business needs a new business model. Sometimes improving what already works creates the strongest return.
I look at growth through three opportunities:
- Optimize: Improve the core business through stronger conversion, retention, margins and operating efficiency.
- Extend: Create new services, channels, operating models (ex. centralized vs. decentralized) markets or experiences that increase customer and commercial value.
- Reinvent: Develop new business models that change how customers receive value and how the business earns revenue.
The leadership challenge is knowing which opportunity deserves investment.
Start with the customer. What problem remains unsolved? What are customers willing to pay for? And what can we deliver better than competitors?
Innovation should begin with a problem or opportunity worth solving, not a technology looking for a use case.
2. Learn From Businesses Creating New Growth
Three well-known global enterprises offer different lessons in unlocking growth.
Walmart — Turn Existing Capabilities Into New Revenue
Walmart has been expanding beyond traditional retail margins by building businesses around its customer reach, marketplace and advertising capabilities.
In its February 2026 fiscal-year earnings release, Walmart reported 46% growth in its global advertising business to nearly $6.4 billion, including VIZIO, alongside improving U.S. eCommerce economics.
This illustrates how existing customer relationships, commerce infrastructure and shopping insights can support revenue opportunities beyond product sales.
Aritzia — Extend a Compelling Customer Proposition
In an apparel market where product relevance, inventory and customer loyalty are critical, Aritzia has focused on expanding its reach while strengthening the shopping experience.
In its October 2026 fiscal Q2 2027 financial results, Aritzia reported 44.1% net revenue growth and 67.7% digital revenue growth.
Their CEO, Jennifer Wong, highlighted strong product demand, inventory positioning and investments in boutiques, digital and marketing.
The lesson? Digital capabilities can help scale a compelling product and brand proposition, but technology alone doesn’t create customer demand.
John Deere — Commercialize Measurable Customer Outcomes
Agriculture faces ongoing pressure to improve productivity, manage input costs and make more efficient use of resources.
John Deere reported that customers used its AI-enabled precision spraying technology across more than five million acres, reducing non-residual herbicide use by nearly 50% on average.
Its Application Savings Guarantee links per-acre technology fees to measurable application savings.
That’s a powerful commercial shift: aligning how technology is priced with the value customers receive.
Three different approaches. One shared lesson: growth starts with customer value and a business positioned to deliver it.
3. Start With the Opportunity, Not a Perfect Data Foundation
I’ve seen organizations ranging from small businesses to global enterprises spend considerable time designing the ideal enterprise data architecture before activating their first meaningful commercial use case.
Small business is much easier – they just don’t know what they don’t know, so they often start from a blank canvas and seek the guidance with quick decision making, framed with starting around one low budget use-case to ‘show and tell’ the art of what’s possible with their data.
A strong data strategy matters. But businesses don’t need to solve every data problem before creating value.
Imagine an apparel retailer testing AI-powered product recommendations.
The first use case might require accurate product attributes, available inventory, consented customer preferences and shopping behaviour. It doesn’t necessarily require rebuilding the entire data ecosystem.
In a prior life I did just that with a brand who had a digital eco-system across 6 countries worldwide. We started with a use-case aligned to all regions. Established a POC with a MDSP (marketing data services platform), which was a tailored approach to the principles of a CDP. Built the data pipelines, cleansed and structure the data, and created an identity layer that could demonstrate how a unified customer profile could be built across 1st and 3rd party data; telematic data, CRM data, website behavioral data and ecommerce PIM product data.
In short, this POC or light-weight composable CDP-like solution could easily be activated through its MarTech tools (Eloqua marketing automation, Adobe AEM, Digital Ads and Salesforce CRM (for internal account-based marketing + Customer 360).
The point is we started with the minimum trusted data, technology and integrations needed to test the opportunity. Establish quality, security, ownership and governance from day one.
Then activate, measure, learn and expand.
The results? We established an identity resolution model across both 1st and 3rd party data that supported broader customer profile enrichment, generating more than $10 million in incremental digital self-service revenue and identifying over $50 million in new sales pipeline opportunities. Customer satisfaction also improved as we helped customers feel more connected to an organization they had previously viewed as difficult to engage with.
2 use-cases. Commercial value unlocked across revenue, efficiencies and customer experience.
Minimum viable data doesn’t mean minimum governance.
Build for today’s use case, but design reusable capabilities that can support tomorrow’s opportunities.
4. People Turn Capabilities Into New Business Opportunities
You can build the most advanced engine in the world. But it won’t decide where to go, recognize a better route or know when to change direction.
The same is true in business.
Digital platforms, customer data and AI create possibilities. People bring the judgment, customer understanding and entrepreneurial thinking needed to turn them into growth.
I’ve seen how that potential gets buried as organizations grow. More layers of leadership, competing priorities and departmental KPIs can quietly reward protecting today’s business rather than creating tomorrow’s.
Amazon offers a useful example. In its AWS Executive Insights guide to Day 1 culture, Amazon describes its two-pizza team model: small teams with clear customer ownership, decision-making authority and responsibility for developing, testing and improving services.
I’ve used a similar approach through my COP formula – connect the individuals Capabilities with the Opportunity. Aim the Opportunity at core Problem. The result has shown how individuals get very invested into solving the problem, and watched them flourish when given the space to put their capabilities to work.
The broader lesson isn’t team size. It’s giving capable people the context, skills, accountability and freedom to act.
That also means developing AI skills, aligning incentives and giving promising experiments a path into everyday business operations.
Technology just enables what’s possible. People and mindset decide what’s worth pursuing and turn it into value a business can get behind.
5. Prove the Economics Before Scaling
Not all growth is good growth.
A new digital channel may increase revenue while adding fulfilment costs, weakening margins or shifting existing sales rather than creating incremental demand.
Before investing, I believe leaders should answer six questions:
- Customer value: Are we solving a validated need
- Commercial value: Do we understand the economics? Will it improve incremental profit, retention or lifetime value
- Competitive advantage: Are we positioned to win
- Readiness: Do we have the people, data, technology and controls required?
- Culture: Do we embrace, not just advocate, quick failures and learnings?
- Investment decision: What evidence tells us to scale, improve or stop?
Give teams clear ownership, defined funding, the time and space and measurable milestones. Test whether the economics still work beyond the initial pilot and share the learnings realized through the short journey.
Innovation shouldn’t be protected from commercial accountability. It should be strengthened by it.
The Next Growth Engine Should Unlock What’s Next
The ultimate measure of digital transformation isn’t how many systems are connected, processes automated or AI tools deployed.
It’s whether those capabilities help businesses deliver greater customer value, compete more effectively and grow profitably.
Consider the origins of Eloqua, the marketing automation company later acquired by Oracle for approximately $871 million.
In 2014, Eloqua cofounder Mark Organ shared how Bain & Company, facing an exodus of talent to technology startups in the late 1990s, gave him the opportunity to spend 50% of his working time developing what became Oracle Eloqua.
Drawing on customer problems he and cofounder Steve Woods had encountered through consulting, they built a business that helped shape the marketing automation industry.
The lesson isn’t that every employee needs half their time to pursue a startup. It’s that organizations can unlock extraordinary ideas when they recognize entrepreneurial talent and give people the trust, time and opportunity to explore problems worth solving.
For business leaders, that means going beyond investing in digital capabilities.
It means creating an environment where people can challenge assumptions, develop new skills, experiment with ideas and turn promising solutions into measurable commercial opportunities.
Technology enables and expands what’s possible. People recognize problems and opportunities. But leadership creates the conditions to turn those opportunities into growth.
First, connect the growth engine. Then make it perform.
The next opportunity is using those capabilities, together with the ingenuity of your people, to create value the business couldn’t deliver before.
Don’t just ask how digital can make your business better. Ask what new business digital can make possible.
Let’s Explore What’s Possible
Have a growth opportunity to explore, an idea to pressure-test or a digital investment that could deliver more value?
I’m always open to exchanging ideas, being a sounding board or helping leaders turn opportunities into measurable business results. Let’s connect and explore what’s possible.
In the meantime, here are two related perspectives worth exploring:
Case Study — Six Countries, One Marketing System: How the World’s Largest Caterpillar Dealer Modernized Marketing Without a Mandate — See how a global enterprise brought people, technology and teams together to overcome silos and accelerate growth.
Article — AI Will Not Fix Broken Marketing Operations. It Will Expose It. — Explore why AI alone isn’t enough, and how leadership, people, data and execution turn capabilities into business value.