Not even the most outstanding growth companies need necessarily be expected to show sales for every single year larger than those of the year before. In another chapter I will attempt to show why the normal intricacies of commercial research and the problems of marketing new products tend to cause such sales increases to come in an irregular series of uneven spurts rather than in a smooth year-by-year progression. The vagaries of the business cycle will also have a major influence on year-to-year comparisons. Therefore growth should not be judged on an annual basis but, say, by taking units of
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