Manufacturers across nearly every segment are obsessed with innovation. They pursue it relentlessly in an effort to stay ahead of today’s increasingly competitive marketplace. And they do it because they assume innovation is the surest way to achieve growth. But the single-minded pursuit of innovation in the manufacturing comes at a literal cost — one that some companies fail to scrutinize as closely as they should. Too often, instead of looking critically at innovation through the lens of a single investment, R&D work is treated as a sunk or blended cost. [...]

All manufacturing companies need to grow over time in order to remain competitive. But there’s growth and then there’s growth. Some firms — like PE-backed firms and emerging firms — have a mandate to figure out how to accelerate business growth more aggressively than the average manufacturing company. Firms with aggressive growth goals not only face pressure in delivering above-market performance, but they also struggle to develop the right internal processes and scale their talent along the way. The truth is you can’t reach more ambitious growth goals with a “business [...]