The not-for-profit, independent Institute, has been co-founded by WPP with Facebook, Google, Kantar, LinkedIn, the NYU School of Professional Studies (NYUSPS), Saïd Business School at the University of Oxford and Spencer Stuart.

Its aim is to help organisations focus on sustained, long-term ‘real growth’ by equipping leaders with best practice approaches to their strategy, structure, capability and leadership.

The programme curriculum is approved by the IRG Founder Advisory Board and will receive an NYU School of Professional Studies Certificate of Completion in real growth leadership.

It consists of a series of workshops in close collaboration with peers, the latest in-depth research, world-class case studies, expert speaker insight and individual coaching, personalised to each attendee’s leadership and organisational business growth needs.

It has had its first event in New York, where WPP shared findings from the largest global study differentiating growth over-performers from under-performers.

For the study, a team of 20 WPP strategists and consultants interviewed around 500 senior business leaders and evaluated over 1,500 online survey contributions from 73 countries to identify seven building blocks for real growth.

It included an AI analysis of over 3,500 publications and a behavioural analysis of LinkedIn data from over 800 million connections across three million employees.

Key findings from the global growth study revealed that: growth over-performers expand the definition of the market they compete in and offer ever-evolving experiences to their consumers; they embrace a ‘whole-brained’ approach and  unlock data with insights; organisations that are more open and better connected both internally and externally outperform their competitors; and organisations that set ‘humanised-growth’ objectives – in terms of value to their customers, their colleagues and their communities – can expect to drive more sustained business growth results.