Article

The new engines of growth

October 2022

Key Points

  • For growth investors, the key question shouldn’t be ‘what’s expanding?’ but ‘what’s changing?’ 
  • The potential for digitalisation to go on disrupting things is greater than many realise
  • Finding new ways to answer evolving human needs is the most powerful force of all

All investment strategies have the potential for profit and loss, your or your clients' capital may be at risk. 


It had to end sometime, but this was brutal. A 13-year run of outperformance by growth stocks has ended abruptly. Events ranging from war in Europe to pandemic-induced supply chain constraints to labour shortages to rampant inflation have left us wondering what’s next for growth investors.

Do great growth investment ideas even still exist? It’s a fair question. Maybe they don’t. This is an attempt to consider that possibility.

Deconstructing growth: the roles of supply and demand

Predicting the future of growth requires an understanding of where growth comes from in the first place.

The essential variables that count are

1. demand
2. supply
3. forces affecting the above

Simply put, growth happens when the supply of a product or service meets demand in the shape of a need or a problem and money changes hands.

That’s step one. Step two occurs when a critical mass of these transactions is made. And how do they come to be made? In multiple ways.

The many engines of growth

Neither supply nor demand is static and a number of ‘engines’ power the process. These ignite when:

          • demand grows, and supply rises to meet it (expansionary growth)

          • demand doesn’t grow, but supply innovates to meet existing demand better (disruptive growth)

          • new demand supersedes old demand following changes elsewhere in the system (replacement growth)

 

Let’s dismantle each of these engines, assess which ones have driven growth over the past decade and consider where they might take us in the decade to come.

Engine No.1: Expansionary growth

Demand grows, and supply rises to meet it

The most obvious route to growth is with the expansionary engine, when a company’s growth is boosted by the growth in the system it’s part of.

Expansionary engines rev up when demand for a product simply grows. Or when a company expands into a new region to find and serve more demand. In either case, fresh demand is created, and supply must rise to meet it. 

But how does this new demand come about? From diverse sources. 

Macroeconomics: Over the past decade, such expansionary growth has benefited from loose fiscal policy, low interest rates, low inflation, globalization, and an entrenched neoliberal political order that lubricated global markets. 

Innovation: A stimulus that awakens previously dormant demand. Such stimuli come in different forms, but they typically involve the removal of impediments to demand. A simple form involves ‘reach’. When a technology reaches a part of the market that wasn’t previously covered, new demand is awakened. For example? Consider the opportunities unlocked for Apple (and thousands of app developers) as the mobile broadband infrastructure was built out.

Beyond reach, business model innovations invite people to participate in a market who previously chose not to – or who weren’t invited. A good example of this democratization is software as a service (SaaS). Demand was awakened when certain types of software were offered at an affordable monthly subscription payment instead of a large upfront capital investment. New customers flooded the system. The business model innovation didn’t just replace the old model, it expanded the opportunity set. 

So what is the state of these expansionary growth engines today? 

It’s fair to call them mixed. There are two big concerns, stemming from the macroeconomic context and the slowing down that happens when a technology matures. 

On the first of these: The global economy is a complex beast. I can’t predict the future, but it seems unlikely that macroeconomic forces will power growth as much in the next decade as in the last.

The question of maturation is also worth more consideration. Since 2005, global fixed broadband subscriptions have more than quintupled, meaning that of the 1.3 billion installed, 85 per cent have been added since 2005. Mobile broadband figures are even more extreme, with virtually all six billion global subscriptions coming after 2007. Each network can be viewed as a new type of infrastructure that has unleashed immeasurable new demand. The opportunities are not exhausted, but in terms of reach, hasn’t the exciting part already happened? 

New tools, new users, new things

There are still grounds for optimism. If we deconstruct how, for example, broadband opened new markets, the magic formula was allowing new users to do new value-creating things. This begs the question of whether similar tools will emerge in the future and whether there will be entrepreneurs who know what to do with them. Will they have new tools with which to open new opportunities?

Cloud computing and agile software development are doing this for everyday companies. Another example involves the notion of data itself. While we’ve lived in a data-driven world for a while, how it is being used – and by whom – is changing. Over the past decade, much of its value has been confined to making existing businesses run more effectively or efficiently. But for other businesses, it represents a new tool that lets new users do new things.

Thus, for some, data is acting as an engine of expansion. It is creating new value and unlocking fresh demand. Good examples of its impact can be found in life sciences, healthcare and synthetic biology. The problems these markets aim to solve are increasingly data problems, not science problems. Entrepreneurs are being equipped with massive amounts of highly valuable new data that can unlock fresh insights every day. 

Another possible example, in time, is the metaverse: the shared virtual world in which social media, online gaming, and commerce coalesce in ways that allow users to interact. If expanding the reach of, say, mobile broadband helped create massive new markets 15 years ago, then what might the emergence of an entirely new digital world such as the metaverse open up? 

Not only does the metaverse offer a new type of gameplay and new ways to socialize, but it also promises a new canvas on which new types of users can create content. Online game platform Roblox, to take one example, is for creators as much as it is for gamers. 

Come to think of it, if we’re looking for new tools that let new users do new things, might the platforms that instigate and unleash human creativity be growth engines that are still just revving up? Are creators just a niche group? Or is creating things part of the wider human condition? It’s a ‘what if…?’ question worth pondering. 

Some of the great growth businesses of our time addressed needs that are part of being human. For example: 

  • Google answered a need to access knowledge 
  • Facebook answered a need for community
  • Netflix answered a need for entertainment
  • Amazon answered a need for goods and services
© Bloomberg/Getty Images


It might seem a stretch to add ‘a need to be creative’ to this list, but the 9.5 million amateurs who create content on Roblox or the 55 per cent of TikTok users who also create content might disagree. Both Roblox and the metaverse could even answer the need for community and the need for entertainment simultaneously.

But that’s not all expansionary engines can do. There is still room for the previously referenced ‘democratization’ to create new markets. What SaaS did for the software industry was, essentially, to offer a compelling solution at a price that millions could, at last, afford. Aren’t we witnessing the same thing in education as more and more learning and credentialing is provided outside traditional universities? For example, each month nearly 50 million users (and growing) help language-learning app Duolingo fulfil its mission to provide universal access to education. Another example involves the advertising industry and how performance-based advertising, for which you pay by results, opened new markets in social and search for small and mid-sized businesses. What will happen when tools, are in place to let those same advertisers place ads on TV ads which, in a non-digital world, had previously only been available to big brands with big budgets? New markets will be created.

Engine No. 2: Disruptive growth

Demand doesn’t grow, but supply innovates to meet existing demand better

More encouraging growth news comes from supply and demand meeting in new ways, such as when supply changes for the better. 

In this case, demand doesn’t necessarily grow, but how it can be served – or how we’d like it to be served – change in ways that allow it to be better met. 

Streaming video is a good example. My own demand for video entertainment hasn’t grown in the past decade, but how I want it delivered has changed. Similarly, my dog’s demand for food is the same as it ever was, but ecommerce has changed how that demand is addressed, in his case via the slick 'autoship' facility of Chewy, the online pet food leader. Technology-based shifts in entertainment and shopping can be seen as disruptive as opposed to expansionary engines of growth.

In the past decade, these growth engines have contributed mightily to growth investors’ portfolios. Ecommerce as a percentage of all retail in the US has more than doubled. Spending on cloud infrastructure now dwarfs investment in traditional datacentres. Electric vehicle sales have passed the inflection point, reaching 6.6 million units (around 9 per cent of the global car market) in 2021, up from about 130,000 in 2012. 

These growth engines are still going strong in large markets experiencing the early stages of disruption. Neither inflation, the actions of the Fed, or recession can put the disruption genie back in the bottle. Nothing can prevent more commerce from going online. More IT will migrate to the cloud, healthcare will become more personalized, transportation will get more electrified, and so on.

The broader point is that this growth engine is not dependent on the growth of the system itself. Dynamic disruption is the trigger.

Engine No. 3: Replacement growth

New demand supersedes old demand following changes elsewhere in the system

 

The third and final growth engine to highlight is demand that is not growing but changing. 

If we agree that growth happens when supply and demand meet in new ways, it follows that changing demand translates into new problems for entrepreneurs to solve in order to grow a business. 

What causes these demand changes?

They’re the natural result of dynamism within a system. A paradigm shift among the participants in a system is one example. To take one example, we are witnessing this with attitudes about climate change and sustainability. There is now a demand for clean energy that simply didn’t exist – or that lay dormant – 20 years ago. At other times, growth in one part of the system creates new pain points elsewhere in the system. Sometimes, expansion and contraction of the system itself trigger something similar, as we’ll discuss in the next section. But the important point, once again, is that as a system changes, so do its problems. And new problems mean new business opportunities.

Dynamism, abundance and scarcity

But there’s a catch. In my earlier deconstruction of where growth comes from, I mentioned three variables:

1. demand
2. supply
3. forces affecting the above

We need to consider this third variable. For example, it’s great that ‘video on demand’ models provide a new and better way to supply my entertainment needs, but if I can’t afford the service, this demand won’t translate into a transaction. Similarly, a young life sciences company revealing insights from petabytes of data may promise much, but if it can’t find investors to provide the capital it needs to survive it can’t supply new goods or services.

In times of economic adversity, we investors need to scrutinize, case-by-case, how portfolio companies might be affected. However, broadly speaking, contraction still doesn’t prevent growth opportunities from arising. As a system contracts, the previously mentioned expansionary growth engines may stall, but the pain points within the system shift about, and with those shifts come new opportunities.

Outsourcing IT to India is a classic example from 20 years ago. It proliferated after the bursting of the tech bubble thanks to its do-more-with-less value proposition. A whole new category containing phenomenal long-term investment opportunities rose from the ashes.

To draw on this point further, let’s consider notions of abundance and scarcity within a system, and the changes afoot. At the risk of oversimplifying, ‘abundance’ captures the zeitgeist of the past 10 to 15 years of technology. Online, individuals have been able to find the answer to just about any question. Similarly, we’ve been able to reach – and instantly connect with – anyone in the world, buy just about anything and have it delivered to our door in two days, and binge on an endless variety of content in TV’s ‘golden age’. Meanwhile, advertisers had an endless stream of data to help them target consumers. And we’ve had an economic and regulatory structure that largely supported all this.

But in the past two years, scarcity has entered our lives, reintroducing friction. Most painfully, we were locked down in our homes for the better part of two years. The scarce resources in that period were mobility, freedom and social interaction, but it goes well beyond that. Advertisers and regulators have limited the availability of certain types of data, while Apple has curtailed the ability of third-party apps to track users’ online activity. Is data now ‘scarce’ in a literal sense? No, but the pendulum is swinging towards where leverage – and value – reside inside the system. Elsewhere, labour is scarce, with a shortage of workers in just about every corner of the economy. Inflation is making the cost of doing business greater. And the likelihood that many global economies will enter recession keeps rising.

Why does this matter? Because, when relative abundance shifts to relative scarcity, the systematic problems to solve – or demands to address – also change. In periods of abundance, the key problem is aggregating demand and making sense of abundance by organizing it. Here, value accrues to companies that can do just that (see Alphabet, Meta, Amazon, Netflix, etc). In contrast, in periods of scarcity, new problems emerge. That is, value accrues to those who either control the scarce resource or who can supply alternative resources. The point here is not that the companies that thrived amid abundance have suddenly seen their growth prospects disappear. The point is that relative scarcity brings forth new opportunities.

Given this scarcity, companies that can exploit their first-party data – customer data they collect and own – seem well-placed. As do companies that sell productivity and automation in anticipation of labour shortages. Most of all, if systemic, expansionary growth gets harder to come by, then anything in and around digital transformation stands to benefit, ie the cloud, data science, agile software development, etc. How will the entities within, say, the Forbes Global 2000 grow if the overall pie is not growing or even shrinking? Answer: by out-competing other slices of the pie. And how will they do that? By embracing digital transformation.

Granted, given the disruption wrought by the internet and the cloud, even in good times there has been a growing need for companies to re-invent and transform themselves. But if economic growth slows, won’t this need become more pressing?

Fans of the technology development scholar Carlota Perez may notice some similarities with the changes accompanying the second half of the ‘technological revolutions’ she describes: the phase when the technologies of the day are redeployed to address the different demands that arose during the revolution. The subsequent infusion of capital is driven as much by incumbent companies’ finance departments as it is by financiers. ‘Digital transformation’ fits this conceptual frame. I am also reminded of the post-Enlightenment ‘convergence club’, a term that economists use to describe the group of countries that embraced the knowledge, technology, and science of the Age of Enlightenment. Those that did went on to thrive. Those that didn’t found themselves on a very different path – towards the ‘developing world’ basket. We are witnessing something similar today. It is becoming clearer that companies that embrace leading-edge technology will be fitter for whatever the future holds. This fitness is what is sold by companies tied to digital transformation.

While the path to digital transformation is already well-trodden by growth investors, its potency and duration are still underappreciated. The very term ‘digital transformation’ forces one to think of a world migrating from analogue point A to digital point B. This can lead one to think that when point B is reached, the transformation is complete. As in, ‘Ok, we’ve moved to the cloud. Glad that’s done!’. But this misses an extremely important point.

Point B is not an end state. It is just a beginning. The digital world contains new, infinitely scalable tools (software, data, compute capacity) that can be put to use in infinitely scalable ways. And not only is the infrastructure we have installed over the past few decades infinitely scalable but so too is the resource that uses it best: human ingenuity and our capacity to solve tomorrow’s problems.

Isn’t that the most powerful growth engine of all?

Risk Factors    

The views expressed should not be considered as advice or a recommendation to buy, sell or hold a particular investment. They reflect opinion and should not be taken as statements of fact nor should any reliance be placed on them when making investment decisions.

This communication was produced and approved in October 2022 and has not been updated subsequently. It represents views held at the time of writing and may not reflect current thinking.

Potential for Profit and Loss

All investment strategies have the potential for profit and loss, your or your clients’ capital may be at risk. Past performance is not a guide to future returns.

This communication contains information on investments which does not constitute independent research. Accordingly, it is not subject to the protections afforded to independent research, but is classified as advertising under Art 68 of the Financial Services Act (‘FinSA’) and Baillie Gifford and its staff may have dealt in the investments concerned.

All information is sourced from Baillie Gifford & Co and is current unless otherwise stated.

The images used in this communication are for illustrative purposes only.

Important Information

Baillie Gifford & Co and Baillie Gifford & Co Limited are authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority (FCA). Baillie Gifford & Co Limited is an Authorised Corporate Director of OEICs. 

Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited provides investment management and advisory services to non-UK Professional/Institutional clients only. Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited is wholly owned by Baillie Gifford & Co. Baillie Gifford & Co and Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited are authorised and regulated by the FCA in the UK.

Persons resident or domiciled outside the UK should consult with their professional advisers as to whether they require any governmental or other consents in order to enable them to invest, and with their tax advisers for advice relevant to their own particular circumstances.

Financial Intermediaries

This communication is suitable for use of financial intermediaries. Financial intermediaries are solely responsible for any further distribution and Baillie Gifford takes no responsibility for the reliance on this document by any other person who did not receive this document directly from Baillie Gifford.

Europe

Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Europe) Limited provides investment management and advisory services to European (excluding UK) clients. It was incorporated in Ireland in May 2018. Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Europe) Limited is authorised by the Central Bank of Ireland as an AIFM under the AIFM Regulations and as a UCITS management company under the UCITS Regulation. Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Europe) Limited is also authorised in accordance with Regulation 7 of the AIFM Regulations, to provide management of portfolios of investments, including Individual Portfolio Management (‘IPM’) and Non-Core Services. Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Europe) Limited has been appointed as UCITS management company to the following UCITS umbrella company; Baillie Gifford Worldwide Funds plc. Through passporting it has established Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Europe) Limited (Frankfurt Branch) to market its investment management and advisory services and distribute Baillie Gifford Worldwide Funds plc in Germany. Similarly, it has established Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Europe) Limited (Amsterdam Branch) to market its investment management and advisory services and distribute Baillie Gifford Worldwide Funds plc in The Netherlands. Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Europe) Limited also has a representative office in Zurich, Switzerland pursuant to Art. 58 of the Federal Act on Financial Institutions ('FinIA'). The representative office is authorised by the Swiss Financial Market Supervisory Authority (FINMA). The representative office does not constitute a branch and therefore does not have authority to commit Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Europe) Limited. Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Europe) Limited is a wholly owned subsidiary of Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited, which is wholly owned by Baillie Gifford & Co. Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited and Baillie Gifford & Co are authorised and regulated in the UK by the Financial Conduct Authority.

China

Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Shanghai) Limited
柏基投资管理(上海)有限公司(‘BGIMS’) is wholly owned by Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited and may provide investment research to the Baillie Gifford Group pursuant to applicable laws.  BGIMS is incorporated in Shanghai in the People’s Republic of China (‘PRC’) as a wholly foreign-owned limited liability company with a unified social credit code of 91310000MA1FL6KQ30. BGIMS is a registered Private Fund Manager with the Asset Management Association of China (‘AMAC’) and manages private security investment fund in the PRC, with a registration code of P1071226.

Baillie Gifford Overseas Investment Fund Management (Shanghai) Limited
柏基海外投资基金管理(上海)有限公司(‘BGQS’) is a wholly owned subsidiary of BGIMS incorporated in Shanghai as a limited liability company with its unified social credit code of 91310000MA1FL7JFXQ. BGQS is a registered Private Fund Manager with AMAC with a registration code of P1071708. BGQS has been approved by Shanghai Municipal Financial Regulatory Bureau for the Qualified Domestic Limited Partners (QDLP) Pilot Program, under which it may raise funds from PRC investors for making overseas investments.

Hong Kong

Baillie Gifford Asia (Hong Kong) Limited 柏基亞洲(香港)有限公司 is wholly owned by Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited and holds a Type 1 and a Type 2 license from the Securities & Futures Commission of Hong Kong to market and distribute Baillie Gifford’s range of collective investment schemes to professional investors in Hong Kong. Baillie Gifford Asia (Hong Kong) Limited 柏基亞洲(香港)有限公司 can be contacted at Suites 2713–2715, Two International Finance Centre, 8 Finance Street, Central, Hong Kong. Telephone +852 3756 5700.

South Korea

Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited is licensed with the Financial Services Commission in South Korea as a cross border Discretionary Investment Manager and Non-discretionary Investment Adviser.

Japan

Mitsubishi UFJ Baillie Gifford Asset Management Limited (‘MUBGAM’) is a joint venture company between Mitsubishi UFJ Trust & Banking Corporation and Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited. MUBGAM is authorised and regulated by the Financial Conduct Authority.

Australia

Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited (ARBN 118 567 178) is registered as a foreign company under the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) and holds Foreign Australian Financial Services Licence No 528911. This material is provided to you on the basis that you are a 'wholesale client' within the meaning of section 761G of the Corporations Act 2001 (Cth) ('Corporations Act').  Please advise Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited immediately if you are not a wholesale client.  In no circumstances may this material be made available to a 'retail client' within the meaning of section 761G of the Corporations Act.

This material contains general information only.  It does not take into account any person’s objectives, financial situation or needs.

South Africa

Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited is registered as a Foreign Financial Services Provider with the Financial Sector Conduct Authority in South Africa.

North America

Baillie Gifford International LLC is wholly owned by Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited; it was formed in Delaware in 2005 and is registered with the SEC. It is the legal entity through which Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited provides client service and marketing functions in North America. Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited is registered with the SEC in the United States of America.

The Manager is not resident in Canada, its head office and principal place of business is in Edinburgh, Scotland. Baillie Gifford Overseas Limited is regulated in Canada as a portfolio manager and exempt market dealer with the Ontario Securities Commission ('OSC'). Its portfolio manager licence is currently passported into Alberta, Quebec, Saskatchewan, Manitoba and Newfoundland & Labrador whereas the exempt market dealer licence is passported across all Canadian provinces and territories. Baillie Gifford International LLC is regulated by the OSC as an exempt market and its licence is passported across all Canadian provinces and territories. Baillie Gifford Investment Management (Europe) Limited (‘BGE’) relies on the International Investment Fund Manager Exemption in the provinces of Ontario and Quebec.

Israel

Baillie Gifford Overseas is not licensed under Israel’s Regulation of Investment Advising, Investment Marketing and Portfolio Management Law, 5755–1995 (the Advice Law) and does not carry insurance pursuant to the Advice Law. This material is only intended for those categories of Israeli residents who are qualified clients listed on the First Addendum to the Advice Law.


Ref: 27388 10016240

About the authors