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Get your $3 burrito this weekend. Initially, customers scored a free burrito if they dressed up as a burrito. Anyone who shows up to a Chipotle on Halloween night (starting at 5 pm) with something "unnecessary" added to their costume will score a $3 burrito! Normally, you'd only have to wear a Halloween costume to get the deal... but not this year. Earlier this month, Chipotle released a spot featuring the fictitious "Cheapotle" - an additive-filled rip-off of the Mexican Grill- that tries to serve a customer a chicken rice bowl with additives like disodium guanylate and disodium inosinate. "We've always focused on sourcing the highest quality ingredients, and we are challenging our customers to learn about the unnecessary ingredients used in typical fast food by adding something "unnecessary" to their costume", said Mark Crumpacker, chief creative and development officer. The chain will donate up to $1 million of the proceeds to the Chipotle Cultivate Foundation to support a more sustainable food future. -The $3 deal is only on Halloween from 5 p.m.to close. A few examples would include a mummy wearing roller skates, a princess with a beard, etc. 

This may be better than any candy you'll stuff into a pillowcase this season. On Halloween you can score a $3 "Boorito" from your favorite joint, Chipotle. What does it take to snag the deal? According to Chipotle, "unnecessary additives in fast food are creepy," and to shed light on that notion, the burrito haven is asking its customers to incorporate something "unnecessary" into your costume. If you visit Chipotle between the hours of 5 p.m. and close on Halloween, the $3 burrito can be yours. What a time to be alive.

PHOTOS: Stars celebrate Halloween

In the event you're out of ideas for unnecessary costume additions, Chipotle's got it all thought out for you. How about adding some roller skates to your mummy costume, or a beard with those fairy wings? We're thinking about donning a halo with our sexy Donald Trump costume. Just kidding. Take a peek at the hilarious and informative ad, to find out more about how you can walk away with the best Halloween treat in town.

Credit to: DOMINIQUE HAIKEL 

                                                Erin Edgemon | eedgemon@al.com

Want to score a Halloween deal and have an excuse to wear your costume a little longer?

Today only Chipotle is offering $3 burritos to anyone who spooks them by "adding something unnecessary to your costume."

The restaurant suggests adding something that really doesn't typically go with your costume (maybe not what you would wear to your party later) like a cowboy hat on a ghost or scuba gear on a skeleton.

This year's deal is a ploy to teach customers about "unnecessary additives" that are typically found in fast food.

The offer is good from 5 p.m. to close.

Visit Chipotle's website for more details on the campaign and to find your local restaurant.

Credit to:

 Erin Edgemon | eedgemon@al.com      Email the author | Follow on Twitter 

In all my adult life, I've never been a fan of Halloween. And not for religious reasons or because I'm easily frightened or anything like that. The truth is: Halloween depresses me. It seems desperate. But I'm a mom now. And biases and personal attitudes have no place when it comes to one's child and this candy-based yearly mayhem. So I suck it up, think of something creative and educational for my son to wear (he's no old enough to have strong opinions yet), get dressed in something I thought of that morning, buy seventy dollars' worth of candy, and wait for the knocks of tiny fits on the door.

And then, I make it rain.

Okay, so I'm not married to one of the professional football players in our town, the ones who answer the door themselves and give out FULL-SIZED CANDY BARS. I do only ever deal in "fun size." But with those, this lady does not skimp.

Last year was our first year in this neighborhood. It's a fairly nice neighborhood situated within walking distance of a not-so-nice neighborhood. I was warned beforehand that the kids from the poorer streets would flood ours. "Just be aware," said a neighbor. "Some will have two bags, saying they're collecting for a sick brother or sister." She shook her head to indicate that this was why America is in a terrible moral state.

Sure enough, I got a lot of kids at the door who weren't from our block. And yes, many held pillowcases for two. Some were clearly teenagers. (My mother cut me off at sixth grade, and I totally support her decision.) But I couldn't be as upset about it as some of the neighbors. I couldn't say, "Nuh uh, if your sister is really sick, let her come here and prove it. Also, quick, what's her birthday and middle name if she exists so much?" I couldn't tell the teenagers they were too old.

I figure: if you're willing to lie for candy, if you're willing to dress up when you're far too old for it, humiliate yourself in front of strangers, then dammit, you probably need these red-nougated 3 Musketeers bars more than I do. Have three. Go with God. Not my job to be the Sheriff of Halloween Town.

Maybe someday I will tell off these youths. Maybe someday I'll adopt the belief that it's my moral imperative to set these kids on the right path with my tough-but-fair rules on candy appropriations. Maybe a future president will someday say, "I was about to embark on a life of scamming and crime till one Halloween when a lady said 'No, I don't think you live around here and also I think you're making up that sick sibling and also are you like seventeen?'" But not yet. Not as long as we can afford the extra bag of candy it costs us once a year.

The lady next door can give out healthy snacks. The family across the street can give allergy-friendly stickers. The dentist can seriously take a vacation or just turn out the lights and don't answer the door because honestly, handing out dental floss on Halloween is like a divorce lawyer handing out his cards a wedding. No one wants your hard doses of reality today, sir. You are RUINING everyone's buzz. Not cool. And everyone can shake their heads at the bussed in poor kids. But that's not going to be me. Not this year, anyway. Because guess what? I don't hold this holiday sacred. I don't really care who shows up at my door. If it's within the two hour trick-or-treating window, you're getting a fist full of candy. It doesn't matter if you're too old, too obviously lying, the meter reader, or the sanitation department telling us that pizza boxes STILL aren't recyclable. You are going away with delicious empty calories in fun holiday packaging. And you will like it.

So this year will be another year of liberal candy distribution. Maybe it won't always be like this. And maybe I'm making it harder for the Halloween gatekeepers to get their point across, and yeah, maybe society needs such people. I suppose I'm glad we have them. But I'm even more glad I'm not one of them. Happy Halloween, anyone.

Credit to:

Elizabeth Paulson

Brach’s recipe for witchy fingers cookies. Brach’s

Candy corn is one of those treats that divide people into camps. Some people love it; others shun it.

I fondly recall candy corn as a Halloween treat when baby boomers were kids, so it surprised me to learn that it dates back to the 1880s. When the Goelitz Confectionery Company began mass production at the turn of the 20th century, the candy was called “Chicken Feed.” How cute is that?

Today, 25 million pounds of candy corn are sold annually, according to the National Confectioners Association. Brach’s makes 80 percent of all candy corn and has new flavors this fall that include Peanut Butter Cup, S’mores, Caramel Macchiato and Pumpkin Spice.

Here’s a whimsical Halloween cookie recipe from Brach’s that makes creative use of candy corn.

Witchy Fingers cookies

Makes about 16 cookies

• 1 (16-ounce) roll of refrigerated sugar cookie dough, softened
• Brach’s Indian Corn (1 per cookie)
• Small tube of red icing
• Plastic Spider Rings (optional) to decorate cookies

Preheat oven to 350 degrees.

Divide roll of cookie dough into 16 slices, and roll each slice into long strips approximately ½ inch wide by 3 inches long. (The dough will expand during baking)

Place six of the strips on an ungreased cookie sheet and bake for 6 minutes. (Bake in batches, only 6 at a time. They will cool quickly.)

Remove cookies from oven and immediately dab each “finger tip” with red icing.

Place one Brach’s Indian Corn on top of red icing and press lightly. Wrap a spider ring around the other end, if desired.

While the freshly baked cookies are still soft, use a straight-edge or butter knife to gently press three horizontal lines in the center of each cookie, to make “knuckles.”

Let cool completely before serving.

Credit to:

Chris Ross

The so-called war on sugar has a new battleground: Halloween. Some Americans are so spooked about the harmful effects of sugar they are finding healthier ways to indulge during the holiday, without disappointing children by handing out apples.

Sugary chocolates still dominate Halloween candy handed out and provide an annual sales treat for companies like Hershey Co, privately held Mars and Nestle SA. But as more consumers demand healthier candies, manufacturers could see the so-called "War on Sugar" scare away some of the $2.1 billion that the National Retail Federation says Americans will spend on Halloween candy this year.

The World Health Organization has linked sugar intake with chronic diseases including diabetes and heart disease, a finding disputed by the Sugar Association, a U.S. trade group.

Some companies, like upstart candy maker Unreal, privately owned health products maker Xlear Inc and Kosher Foods producer Kayco, have developed low-sugar candies from unusual concoctions, like puffed quinoa and cabbage, to win over health-conscious, sugar-wary shoppers.

The data may give some a fright. Nearly one-fourth of Americans say they are buying healthier candy like dark chocolate or chocolates with added fruits or nuts for seasonal occasions like Halloween than five years ago, National Confectioners Association (NCA) data shows.

In addition, one in five say they are more likely to buy chocolates or candies in a smaller portion size. Confectionery makes up about 13 percent of Americans' 10.8 million tonne-per-year sugar consumption, and the candy industry says that Americans know there is sugar in candy and moderate their intake accordingly.

TOIL AND TROUBLE

Still some shoppers are trying different brews this year. Kevin Schiffman, a self-described "health freak," bought a can of Unreal chocolates for $20 during a recent trip to Whole Foods, opting to spend significantly more on the treats he plans to hand out to trick-or-treaters than last year.

The treats, which are made from fair trade cocoa and cane sugar, puffed quinoa, and cabbage, carrots and beets for coloring, contain around 5 grams of sugar per serving, compared with over 20 grams for many traditional candy bars.

In prior years, he said he handed out assorted chocolates like Reese's and Kit Kats, wary that health-minded people sometimes draw groans and eye-rolls from trick-or-treaters by giving out apples or toothbrushes.

"There wasn't really much out there that you could choose from unless you're giving out fruit," said the 35-year-old Boston-area resident, who works in sales at WikiFoods, a Cambridge, Massachusetts, food company.

"We don't want to get eggs on the house." Xlear hopes to win over customers with its Sparx brand of candies that use xylitol, a fibrous sugar found in birch trees and corn cobs that it says is safe for diabetics and lower in calories than cane sugar.

At the moment, they are only sold at health food stores and distributed to dental offices to give to kids as part of Halloween candy buyback programs, though the company is planning to expand, said Shad Slaughter, a consultant at Xlear.

Kayco has introduced Chocolate Leather, a chewier, lower-sugar chocolate bar. "With the growing awareness of parents who would like their kids to eat less sugar, this is going to grow," said Glenn Schacher, a research and development specialist in New York who developed the product of Kayco

The Obama administration has pushed for food companies to include added sugar content on their labels, which has drawn sharp rebukes from the sugar lobby. For the moment, most Americans will still hand out candy and chocolates filled with sugar to trick-or-treaters on Saturday and use the holiday as an excuse to indulge.

"I can be a pig four times a year," said Tom Cardamone, a 46-year-old Brooklyn, New York, resident, who said he is not normally much of a candy eater. "Every holiday, I know it's candy, and I have my addictions."

Credit to:

© Thomson Reuters 2015

Plain Dealer file photo

CLEVELAND, Oh -- KeyCorp this morning said it's buying First Niagra of Buffalo, a deal that will increase Key's size by 40 percent and make it the 13th largest bank in the United States.

Cleveland-based Key will pay $4.1 billion in cash and stock for First Niagara, which has $39 billion in assets and $29 billion in deposits and 394 branches in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts.  

After the purchase, Key will have about $135 billion in assets and nearly 1,400 branches. It currently has about $95 billion in assets and nearly 1,000 branches.

The deal will give Key a larger presence in New York and expand in Pennsylvania, Massachusetts and Connecticut.  

Largest U.S. banks, by assets

This shows how U.S.-based banks will stack up in size after the Key/First Niagara deal.

1. JPMorgan Chase

2. Bank of America

3. Wells Fargo

4. Citibank

5. U.S. Bank

6. PNC

7. Mellon/ Bank of New York

8. State Street

9. Capital One

10. SunTrust

11. BB&T

12. Fifth Third

13. KeyCorp

14. Goldman Sachs

15. Morgan Stanley

16. Regions Bank

17. Union Bank

18. Northern Trust

19. Citizens

20. Ally

"Key and First Niagara are a powerful combination, driven by a shared commitment to the clients and to the communities we serve," said KeyCorp Chairman and CEO Beth Mooney said in a statement.

"This transformational opportunity will bring compelling and complementary capabilities to our shared 3 million clients."

This represents the biggest purchase by a local bank in years, as banks nationwide have shied away from deals since the financial crisis of 2008, primarily because of uncertainty about new regulations and capital requirements to cover potentially bad loans.

Key has about 13,500 employees; First Niagara has about 5,400. Analysts believe some jobs will be cut in New York.

The deal will put Key just a hair behind Fifth Third in size. Cincinnati-based Fifth Third has about $142 billion in assets and remains -- for now -- the largest Ohio-based bank.

This is the first big acquisition under Mooney, who became CEO four years ago. In a conference call this morning with analysts, Mooney deflected whether Key is looking for other big deals to grow bigger. "We are excited at the opportunity we have in front of us (to fold in First Niagara)", she said.

Investors pushed down shares of Key on Thursday as rumors of the deal leaked. Key closed Thursday down 4 percent, at $13.38. 

On paper, Key will become the 13th-largest bank. But if you look at traditional deposit banks with a branch network, that knocks out Mellon, State Street, Goldman Sachs and Morgan Stanley, putting Fifth Third at No. 8 and Key at No. 9.

Key and First Niagara have been competitors. In Greater Buffalo for example, First Niagara has been No. 2 behind M&T. Key has been No. 3.

Credit to:

Teresa Dixon Murray, The Plain Dealer 
Email the author | Follow on Twitter 

CLEVELAND (AP) — KeyCorp will stretch its reach deeper into the Northeast with a $4.1 billion deal to buy First Niagara Financial Group and create the 13th largest commercial bank in the United States.

Cleveland-based KeyCorp says it will offer a portion of its stock and $2.30 in cash for each First Niagara share. The total comes to $11.40 per share based on the Thursday closing price of Key Corp's stock.

That represents a roughly 10 percent premium to First Niagara's $10.38 closing price on Thursday. Its shares are up almost 2 percent in premarket trading before the market opens.

Buffalo, New York-based First Niagara has nearly 400 locations in New York, Pennsylvania, Connecticut and Massachusetts. It has $39 billion in assets and $29 billion in deposits.

By The Associated Press 

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Credit to:    OOI KIN FAI     Follow him on Twitter

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If JDT are hoping to bring home the silverware, these are the potentially key areas which they have to come out on top of....

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PETRO KOVALCHUK VS LUCIANO FIGUEROA

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Istiklol have a propensity to concede goals via aerial route and that is where JDT must dominate to give themselves a fighting chance on foreign soil. In Luciano Figueroa, JDT have someone with the knack of finding space in the box to add to his heading prowess. If the delivery from wide areas or from set pieces are on the money, Figueroa may well end up being the match winner here.

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KHURSHED MAKHMUDOV VS HARRIS HARUN

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Makhmudov have already notched up four goals in this season’s competition and his runs from midfield is an art form. Hariss Harun will have to temper his desire to burst forward and keep a close eye on Makhmudov. The Singaporean international will have to ensure that Makhmudov's late runs into the box are checked and not allowed to cause disarray in JDT's defence.

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DILSHOD VASIEV VS AIDIL ZAFUAN

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The captain of Istiklol is a canny operator in the forward line and plays more in the hole behind the striker, a player whom plenty of movement can be expected. Aidil likes to defend on his front foot and be proactive in his actions but will have to be measured in his choices so as not to get caught up away from his defensive line in trying to deny Vasiev the space he craves.

Finding Your Path to Success

"How are you going to win in the period ahead?" That's the key question behind developing strategy.

To win at anything worthwhile, you need a game plan. Professional sports teams know this, and this idea applies to your organization, your department, your team – and even to yourself as an individual.

To be successful means knowing how to use your talent and resources to best advantage, and it's very difficult to "win" if you don't have this game plan in place.

This article introduces you to a common-sense, systematic approach to strategy development.

Approaches to Strategy

In a for-profit company, for which competition and profitability are important, your goals will differ from those of a nonprofit or government department. Likewise, objectives for a department or team will have a different scope from objectives for your organization as a whole.

For example, and depending on scope and circumstances, you may want to develop strategies to:

1. Increase profitability.

2. Gain more market share.

3. Increase approval ratings, or boost customer satisfaction.

4. Complete a project under budget.

To determine your strategy, you must understand fully the internal and external environmental factors that affect you. With that understanding, you can identify your clear advantages and use these to be successful. From there, you can make informed choices and implement your strategy effectively.

So, strategy creation follows a three-stage process:

1. Analyzing the context in which you're operating.

2. Identifying strategic options.

3. Evaluating and selecting the best options.

We'll look at this process, and review some useful tools that can help you develop your strategy.

Stage 1: Analyzing Your Context and Environment

In this first stage, you ensure that you fully understand yourself and your environment. Do the following:

Analyze Your Organization

Firstly, examine your resources, liabilities, capabilities, strengths, and weaknesses. A SWOT Analysis Add to My Personal Learning Plan is a great tool for uncovering what you do well and where you have weaknesses, providing that you use it rigorously. It's much easier to achieve your objectives when your strategy uses your strengths without exposing your weaknesses.

Also, look at your Core Competencies Add to My Personal Learning Plan. These highlight your unique strengths, and help you think about how you can set yourself apart from your competitors.

Analyze Your Environment

Now you need to examine your current operating environment to predict where things are moving. Are there exciting opportunities that you should pursue? What future scenarios are likely in your industry, and how will these impact the work that you do?

PEST Analysis Add to My Personal Learning Plan, Porter's Diamond Add to My Personal Learning Plan, and Porter's Five Forces Add to My Personal Learning Plan are great starting points for analyzing your environment. They show where you have a strong position within the larger environment, and where you may have issues.

As you prepare to create your strategy, make sure that you're working in a way that's aligned with changes in your operating environment, rather than working against them. These external factors are often beyond your control, so if you pursue a strategy that requires a change in one of these elements, you may have a long, exhausting, unprofitable battle ahead of you.

Tip:A TOWS matrix Add to My Personal Learning Plan can help you with your internal and external analysis. This framework combines everything you learned in your SWOT Analysis (TOWS is SWOT in reverse), and then applies it to developing a strategy that either maximizes strengths and opportunities, or minimizes weaknesses and threats.

Analyze Your Customers and Stakeholders

Your strategy defines how you'll win, and winning is typically framed by how well you satisfy your customers. For-profit companies must keep their customers and shareholders happy. Governments, nonprofits, and project teams all have other stakeholders to satisfy as well. Strategy creation must consider these needs.

Identify your clients and stakeholders. What do your clients want? And who are the key stakeholders in your success? A Stakeholder Analysis Add to My Personal Learning Plan will help you uncover these needs and preferences.

Also, look at your market in detail. Answer key questions such as "How is our market segmented Add to My Personal Learning Plan?", "What subpopulations can we reach cost-effectively?" and "What is our optimal Marketing Mix Add to My Personal Learning Plan?"

Analyze Your Competitors

In a traditional for-profit company, you must understand how your products compare with competitors' products, and what your competitors' competencies are. How easy, or difficult, is it to enter your market? What alternatives do customers have?

Our article on USP Analysis Add to My Personal Learning Plan helps you identify ways in which you can compete effectively. You'll also find many useful tools that can help you understand competitors in our article on Competitive Intelligence Add to My Personal Learning Plan.

Non-profits, departmental teams and projects have competitors too. Other projects and teams within the department compete for money and other resources. Therefore, you must prove that you can add value Add to My Personal Learning Plan, meet objectives, and contribute to organizational success.

Stage 2: Identifying Strategic Options

In Stage 1, you developed an understanding of how your organization or team fits within the context of the internal and external environments. Now it's time to think about the different things that you could do to create a clear advantage, and meet your objectives. Here are some fundamental activities that can help you make this decision.

Brainstorm Options

Use creativity tools like Brainstorming Add to My Personal Learning Plan, Reverse Brainstorming Add to My Personal Learning Plan and Starbursting Add to My Personal Learning Plan to explore projects that you could run to develop competitive advantage. Guide your brainstorming with reference to the organization's mission statement, but, depending on your role in the organization, consider how far you should be constrained by this.

Examine Opportunities and Threats

Your SWOT Analysis identified some of the main opportunities and threats you face. Using this as a starting point, brainstorm additional ways to maximize your opportunities, minimize your threats, or perhaps even turn your threats into opportunities.

Solve Problems

A problem-solving approach can also help at this stage. If your problem is that you're not achieving your goals, ask yourself how you can ensure that you do. (If everyone in your industry finds it hard to deal with a particular problem, then you may gain a competitive edge by dealing with it.)

For example, if you want to increase your customer satisfaction ratings in an industry plagued by poor customer relations, your starting position is "low satisfaction." Brainstorm why this is the case, and create strategic options that would increase satisfaction. Tools like Root Cause Analysis Add to My Personal Learning Plan, the 5 Whys Add to My Personal Learning Plan, and Appreciative Inquiry Add to My Personal Learning Plan can give you some interesting new perspectives on these problems.

Stage 3: Evaluating and Selecting Strategic Options

The final stage is to evaluate strategic options in detail, and select the ones that you want to pursue.

Credit to www.mindtools.com.

Turning a small business into a big one is never easy. The statistics are grim. Research suggests that only one-tenth of 1 percent of companies will ever reach $250 million in annual revenue. An even more microscopic group, just 0.036 percent, will reach $1 billion in annual sales.

In other words, most businesses start small and stay there.

But if that's not good enough for you—or if you recognize that staying small doesn't necessarily guarantee your business's survival— there are examples of companies out there that have successfully made the transition from start-up to small business to fully-thriving large business.

That's the premise behind the search Keith McFarland, an entrepreneur and former Inc. 500 CEO, undertook in writing his book, The Breakthrough Company. "There has always been lots of books out there on how to run a big company," says McFarland, who now runs his own consulting business, McFarland Partners based in Salt Lake City. "But I couldn't find one about how to maintain fast-growth over the long-term. So I studied the companies who had done it to learn their lessons."

What follows are some of the lessons McFarland learned from his study of the breakthrough companies and how they can help you create a growth strategy of your own.

Developing a Growth Strategy: Intensive Growth

Part of getting from A to B, then, is to put together a growth strategy that, McFarland says, "brings you the most results from the least amount of risk and effort." Growth strategies resemble a kind of ladder, where lower-level rungs present less risk but maybe less quick-growth impact. The bottom line for small businesses, especially start-ups, is to focus on those strategies that are at the lowest rungs of the ladder and then gradually move your way up as needed. As you go about developing your growth strategy, you should first consider the lower rungs of what are known as Intensive Growth Strategies. Each new rung brings more opportunities for fast growth, but also more risk. They are:

1. Market Penetration. The least risky growth strategy for any business is to simply sell more of its current product to its current customers—a strategy perfected by large consumer goods companies, says McFarland. Think of how you might buy a six-pack of beverages, then a 12-pack, and then a case. "You can't even buy toilet paper in anything less that a 24-roll pack these days," McFarland jokes. Finding new ways for your customers to use your product—like turning baking soda into a deodorizer for your refrigerator—is another form of market penetration.

2. Market Development. The next rung up the ladder is to devise a way to sell more of your current product to an adjacent market—offering your product or service to customers in another city or state, for example. McFarland points out that many of the great fast-growing companies of the past few decades relied on Market Development as their main growth strategy. For example, Express Personnel (now called Express Employment Professionals), a staffing business that began in Oklahoma City quickly opened offices around the country via a franchising model. Eventually, the company offered employment staffing services in some 588 different locations, and the company became the fifth-largest staffing business in the U.S.

3. Alternative Channels. This growth strategy involves pursuing customers in a different way such as, for example, selling your products online. When Apple added its retail division, it was also adopting an Alternative Channel strategy. Using the Internet as a means for your customers to access your products or services in a new way, such as by adopting a rental model or software as a service, is another Alternative Channel strategy.

4. Product Development. A classic strategy, it involves developing new products to sell to your existing customers as well as to new ones. If you have a choice, you would ideally like to sell your new products to existing customers. That's because selling products to your existing customers is far less risky than "having to learn a new product and market at the same time," McFarland says.

5. New Products for New Customers. Sometimes, market conditions dictate that you must create new products for new customers, as Polaris, the recreational vehicle manufacturer in Minneapolis found out. For years, the company produced only snowmobiles. Then, after several mild winters, the company was in dire straits. Fortunately, it developed a wildly-successful series of four-wheel all-terrain vehicles, opening up an entirely new market. Similarly, Apple pulled off this strategy when it introduced the iPod. What made the iPod such a breakthrough product was that it could be sold alone, independent of an Apple computer, but, at the same time, it also helped expose more new customers to the computers Apple offered. McFarland says the iPhone has had a similar impact; once customers began to enjoy the look and feel of the product's interface, they opened themselves up to buying other Apple products.

If you choose to follow one of the Intensive Growth Strategies, you should ideally take only one step up the ladder at a time, since each step brings risk, uncertainty, and effort. The rub is that sometimes, the market forces you to take action as a means of self-preservation, as it did with Polaris. Sometimes, you have no choice but to take more risk, says McFarland.

Dig Deeper: New Product Development on the Cheap

Developing a Growth Strategy: Integrative Growth Strategies

If you've exhausted all steps along the Intensive Growth Strategy path, you can then consider growth through acquisition or Integrative Growth Strategies. The problem is that some 75 percent of all acquisitions fail to deliver on the value or efficiencies that were predicted for them. In some cases, a merger can end in total disaster, as in the case of the AOL-Time Warner deal. Nevertheless, there are three viable alternatives when it comes to an implementing an Integrative Growth Strategy. They are:

1. Horizontal. This growth strategy would involve buying a competing business or businesses. Employing such a strategy not only adds to your company's growth, it also eliminates another barrier standing in your way of future growth—namely, a real or potential competitor. McFarland says that many of breakthrough companies such as Paychex, the payroll processing company, and Intuit, the maker of personal and small business tax and accounting software, acquired key competitors over the years as both a shortcut to product development and as a way to increase their share of the market.

2. Backward. A backward integrative growth strategy would involve buying one of your suppliers as a way to better control your supply chain. Doing so could help you to develop new products faster and potentially more cheaply. For instance, Fastenal, a company based in Winona, Minnesota that sells nuts and bolts (among other things), made the decision to acquire several tool and die makers as a way to introduce custom-part manufacturing capabilities to its larger clients.

3. Forward. Acquisitions can also be focused on buying component companies that are part of your distribution chain. For instance, if you were a garment manufacturer like Chicos, which is based in Fort Myers, Florida, you could begin buying up retail stores as a means to pushing your product at the expense of your competition.

Dig Deeper: Advice on Growth Through Acquisition

Developing a Growth Strategy: Diversification

Another category of growth strategies that was popular in the 1950s and 1960s and is used far less often today is something called diversification where you grow your company by buying another company that is completely unrelated to your business. Massive conglomerates such as General Electric are essentially holding companies for a diverse range of businesses based solely on their financial performance. That's how GE could have a nuclear power division, a railcar manufacturing division and a financial services division all under the letterhead of a single company. This kind of growth strategy tends to be fraught with risk and problems, says McFarland, and is rarely considered viable these days.

Dig Deeper: The Power of Diversification

Developing a Growth Strategy: How Will You Grow?

Growth strategies are never pursued in a vacuum, and being willing to change course in response to feedback from the market is as important as implementing a strategy in a single-minded way. Too often, companies take a year to develop a strategy and, by the time they're ready to implement it, the market has changed on them, says McFarland. That's why, when putting together a growth strategy, he advises companies to think in just 90 chunks, a process he calls Rapid Enterprise Design. Sometimes the best approach is to take it one rung at a time.