With growth being led exclusively by companies outside the established top 10 in many categories, answering the question of what drives sustained business growth has taken on a new urgency. Traditional marketing and sales models are losing relevance and even tech giants are being challenged – as new players disrupt the disruptors and consumers evolve towards new channels and more personalized experiences.
Initiative for Real Growth
The Initiative for Real Growth (IRG) is a global thought leadership piece created to identify drivers of sustained growth in today’s business environment. Relevant for managers and leaders across any business, IRG provides a practical framework for building effective growth strategies and shares differences in approach between overperformers and underperformers.
Charles Foster, CEO Kantar Insights – Africa and ME
Charles Foster is an accomplished senior executive with considerable, board level, international experience in marketing research and management. Over the early part of his almost three decades in the marketing research Charles grew a leading advertising testing business and sold the consultancy to a leading global conglomerate.
Subsequently, as MD, he managed the geographic expansion of the acquired business into 8 countries across Africa & the Middle East, in the process managing a staff compliment that grew from 15 to close to 400. CAGR’s in excess of 25% resulted from a combination of organically growing businesses & acquisitions.
Charles has a proven track record in recruiting, developing, coaching and mentoring talent and seeing them move to senior executive roles. More recently as CEO Kantar Insights division Charles has managed the three operating brands, Millward Brown, TNS & AMRB across the region comprising over 1,500 staff in 15 countries under the Kantar umbrella.
