Over the past few weeks, we have discussed certain pitfalls to the success of your growth portfolio. These have included items such as ?missing the mark? with your target market or position in the value chain and mismanaging project rollouts, holding your company back from receiving the maximum ROI on the portfolio. Lastly, we will talk about delivering on target.

Your growth portfolio exists for a very specific reason. It was carefully constructed to maximize your company's growth through increases in market share and profit margins. Delivering the results from your growth portfolio and keeping them in line with the company's goals and plans for the future is one of the biggest challenges facing marketing executives today.

There are certain projects that your company might have rolled out years ago that are still bringing in revenue. While these products might have been historical ?cash cows,? their presence in your growth portfolio might be a hindrance. Keeping your company innovative means becoming among the first to introduce a new technology, product, or service. If your company is to move forward in the future, this ?backward? thinking might have a negative impact on those goals.

While it is not advisable to simply dump a cash cow that is still bringing in revenue just because it is a few years old, making this older product the focus of your portfolio is far from innovative. In order to move forward as an innovative company and be recognized as an innovation leader, you must have managers that are not afraid of the future, great research teams to gather data on market trends and the correct management in place to accurate decipher the data and predict the company's next move.

Don't let your company's innovation get held up because of a lack of direction. If your company truly wants to be innovative and forward thinking, your growth portfolio should be focused on products that can be introduced to entirely new markets and grab that immediate market share. Innovation with your older products is limited to campaigns targeted at increasing market share or finding ways to increase profit margins.

Now that we have discussed how to identify and avoid potential pitfalls when it comes to product innovation and growth, come back next week for our sixth and final segment: Tracking Your Success, which will focus on how to track and measure your success.