This is one of the core service categories we offer at Ogilvy Consulting, the strategic consulting arm of the Ogilvy ecosystem. In this blog we focus on this practice in particular, understanding that it is part of a broader portfolio of capabilities that work in an integrated way to transform organizations.
In a market where disruption is the rule and not the exception, companies face a familiar paradox: they need to grow while they innovate, but innovating often means questioning the very practices that generate today's results. This tension is not an obstacle; it's the engine that drives real business transformation.
Our Growth Strategy and Business Innovation practice is not about doing more of the same, nor about chasing novelty for its own sake. It's about understanding where the real value of the organization resides, how that value is evolving, and how to design the future of the business while optimizing its present.
Business Audits: The Strategic X-Ray That Reveals the Invisible
Our business audits are assessments that identify critical disconnects between declared strategy and operational reality — revealing where a company is losing value, leaving money on the table, or investing resources in areas that don't generate proportional return. They go far beyond evaluating operational processes.
An effective audit quantifies the business impact of what is and isn't working. It can reveal, for example, that infrastructure investments generate marginal returns, while intangible assets — such as employee knowledge — are undervalued and neglected. This kind of finding can decisively reorient an organization's investment strategy and performance indicators.
Value Creation Strategy: Turning Attributes into Perceived Advantages
Our value creation strategy identifies what makes your company unique and how to turn those strengths into clear reasons why customers choose you over the competition, transforming existing capabilities into competitive advantages perceived and valued by the market.
At our sister agency, Interaction Ogilvy, we worked with BMW in Costa Rica when the country had become the third market in Latin America with the most charging points for electric vehicles. However, there was a paradox: the infrastructure existed, but people couldn't find it. The country was uninformed about where to charge their electric vehicles.
The value creation strategy did not focus on creating new infrastructure but on illuminating what already existed. We created the Electric Map of Costa Rica — seven independent maps, one for each province, developed with a specialized cartographer. The information was shared with Google Maps for universal access, transforming an existing but invisible asset into a perceived and valued advantage.
The result: more than a 455% increase in leads during the first month of the campaign, and the BMW iX became the best-selling premium electric SUV in Costa Rica. We didn't invent a new capability — we illuminated, structured, and amplified an existing asset, completely transforming the value proposition. Sometimes the gold is already there; it just needs to be made visible.
Business Modeling: Architecting How Value Flows
Our business modeling redesigns how your company generates revenue, delivers value, and captures profit — exploring alternative monetization models, more efficient cost structures, or completely new ways of organizing your value chain for sustainable competitive advantage.
At Interaction Ogilvy we worked on a case that perfectly exemplifies the power of redesigning business models: a Costa Rican hydroelectric generation company faced an existential crisis. Costa Rica had operated on more than 98% clean energy for seven consecutive years, but in 2020, the Costa Rican Electricity Institute (ICE) — the only entity authorized by law to distribute electricity — began canceling contracts with private generators due to an oversupply. The company could no longer sell its green energy. To anyone. By law.
The redesign of the business model was radical: we transformed the hydroelectric plant into one of the world's first green cryptocurrency mining centers, powered exclusively by hydroelectric energy. The company began renting space in custom containers for cryptocurrency mining, including the cost of clean energy as part of the rental fee — exactly what environmentally conscious crypto miners are looking for.
The asset stayed the same, clean hydroelectric energy, but how value was captured from that asset changed completely: from selling electricity as a regulated commodity to selling energy infrastructure as a specialized service. This strategy not only saved the company; its proven scalability offers the opportunity to potentially position Costa Rica as one of the leading green cryptocurrency mining countries in the world. That's the power of rethinking how value flows.
Growth/Innovation Roadmaps: Navigating Between Today and Tomorrow
Our growth and innovation roadmaps are sequenced strategic plans that balance optimizing the current business with building capabilities for the future business. They define clear milestones, prioritized investments, and a realistic path that allows the organization to evolve without compromising present results. The challenge we see frequently is organizations whose core business still generates most of the revenue, but operates in markets with declining margins and increasingly intense competition. They know they need to evolve toward higher-value models, but cannot put current cash flow at risk. It's the classic dilemma of "changing the tire while the car is in motion."
An effective growth roadmap doesn't propose an abrupt transition, but an architecture of integrated horizons. This implies: optimizing the current business through operational efficiency to free up resources; extending strategically into segments or products where existing capabilities generate competitive advantage with less investment; and developing new capabilities through selective alliances that allow building knowledge without prohibitive capital investments.
Each horizon builds on the previous one, creating an executable path toward transformation. The result is an orderly and deliberate evolution, in which each phase prepares the ground for the next while maintaining stable operations in the present.
Innovation Design: Innovation with Commercial Purpose
Our innovation design approach develops products, services, and business models that solve real customer or market problems, from initial concept through validated prototypes. The goal isn't to innovate for creativity's sake, but to ensure that innovation has commercial viability and potential to scale.
At Interaction Ogilvy we developed Talk Do It, an innovation born from identifying a critical tension: according to the World Health Organization, 70% of blind people in the world are unemployed. They face discrimination in the labor market because employers see them as a problem, and few workplaces are adapted to their needs. Simultaneously, there is massive global demand for conversational English learning.
The innovation connected both sides of this equation. Talk Do It is a social startup where blind people from different countries teach English through video calls using a 100% conversational method. The platform trains blind people as teachers, connects them with students, and generates income for each class taught.
The design transforms what is traditionally perceived as a limitation into a competitive advantage. Blind people develop exceptional listening and communication skills, particularly well-suited to language teaching based on conversation. The result is a sustainable business model that generates dignified employment, creates economic value, and connects an underused supply with real market demand.
Growth Strategy and Business Innovation isn't an episodic practice but a permanent organizational capability: the ability to see your company simultaneously as it is today and as it could be tomorrow, and to systematically build the bridge between both realities. In markets where change is the only constant, this capability is not a strategic luxury — it's a survival imperative.
Ready to explore how we can help you build this strategic bridge? Let's talk.
Written by Daniela Laclé
Head of Consulting
