Book excerpt: Practical strategies to propel your company to the top American business is entering unchartered territory. Recent trends suggest that we are moving out of a recession-fairly labeled The Great Recession-into a recovery phase characterized by high unemployment with growth. As such, the business road ahead will be challenging. Growth will be harder to achieve and business failure will be more prevalent. But the best of America's growth businesses will pass through this cycle to experience renewed and hopeful growth in contrast to the high failure rate of those who fail to grow. The numbers are proving this to be the extreme case-a higher upside with a greater failure rate. What are America's recession-proof, highest growth companies doing differently? What are the values, fundamentals, and actions that will make the difference between failure, or just surviving and thriving? The answer to these questions is, what Thomson calls, The 7 Essentials-value proposition, high growth market segment, marquee customers, big brother alliances, exponential returns, inside/outside leadership, and essential board experts. This book is the timely answer to the search for what it will take to propel a company's growth through these challenging times. It's for management teams of any business, independent of size or industry, which desires to identify a course of action to improve their opportunities to grow. "Applying the 7 Essentials will improve your company's growth prospects," says author David Thomson. Growth companies are especially defined by their ability to grow through recession and recovery periods to become the new growth leaders. The case studies and the numbers in this book prove it. This reliable resource extends the insights from Thomson's bestselling book, Blueprint to a Billion: 7 Essentials to Achieve Exponential Growth to apply the 7 Essentials to all companies. Thomson is known as America's growth expert on what it takes to transform a small business into a billion dollar one. He has been recognized by Investors Business Daily as the "Guru for Uncovering the Blueprint for Sizzling Growth Companies." Offers busy professionals essential insights that will move their business or business unit beyond surviving and into thriving now and in the future Written by an expert on how companies achieve growth in challenging markets Contains key CEO interviews and quick case studies and is supported by on-line scoring tools to help teams apply the 7 Essentials Economic weakness has not changed the need for companies to grow. This book provides you with a proven framework to overcome such challenges and thrive in today's challenging business environment.