Hacking Growth: How Today's Fastest-Growing Companies Drive Breakout Success

by Sean Ellis

Growth teams should also experiment with combinations of the ways in which they can generate revenue for a freemium product. Many successful apps use a mix of advertising, referral fees, and sponsorships to generate revenue.

Daniel Kahneman, the Nobel Prize–winning psychologist who has studied and written extensively about behavioral economics, shared many such insights in his book Thinking, Fast and Slow. Similarly, economist Daniel Ariely covers eye-opening experiments he has conducted about how consumers make purchasing decisions, such as we saw earlier with The Economist subscription example in his book Predictably Irrational. Another fascinating look at how consumers make choices is The Art of Choosing, by one of the world’s leading specialists on the psychology of choice, economist Sheena Iyengar.

study showed that often stalls are not caused by the entrance of a bold new competitor or a disruptive innovation, like smartphones, but by chronic failures on the part of companies to closely monitor customer satisfaction and to zealously look for early warning signs of disaffection.

Growth teams help to keep companies on their toes, constantly on the lookout for changes in customer behavior and experimenting with new ideas for growth.

Our early stage hustle had fallen prey to administrative routine, and valuable growth experimentation had taken a backseat to busywork.