Why are some companies luckier than others?

For more than 30 years, we have helped many of the world's most dynamic and ambitious companies develop into market leaders. Our role as trusted business advisors has given us the opportunity to put a huge array of organizations under the microscope. Along the way, we've built up a wealth of knowledge of what powers a handful of companies to rise above the others.

The Exceptional Enterprise model captures these insights and shows how a business makes the journey to market leadership. The model highlights the six fundamental business challenges a company should address, how they change over time and the key attributes a business needs to make it to the top.

A company will typically go through three distinct growth stages:

• Emerging stage — companies concentrate on identifying the market opportunity, available sources of funding and the right people to help kickstart the business.
• Rapid-growth stage — companies focus their energies on becoming a supplier of choice for their most valuable customers, on managing expansion and securing additional capital to accelerate growth.
• Next-generation market leader — the best businesses turn their attention to working effectively across global markets, try to balance the entrepreneurial spirit with corporate culture and ensure they optimize their capital structure to help meet shareholder expectations.

Achieving market leadership means successfully addressing these six challenges:

• Customer recruitment and management
• Managing finance
• Managing risk
• Operational effectiveness
• People recruitment and retention
• Transactions and alliances