Richard Brooks

My thoughts on business, value, and how AI is changing both.

Thirty years running businesses. Now I help you run yours. Along the way I've invested in companies and worked inside others as a fractional CMO, and I teach AI, sales and key account management at Cranfield. Two books so far. More about me.

Latest essay

12 November 2026 · 9 min readNew

Why growing companies keep hitting a glass ceiling

Larry Greiner's growth curve explains why companies grow smoothly to a certain size and then hit a crisis, again and again. The five phases and their crises, why the team that starts a business is rarely the team that grows it, how to prepare before the crisis arrives, and what it looks like in a language company. With an animated curve and a diagnostic.

Figure 1

Evolution and revolution as organisations grow

Our drawing, after Greiner (1972). Size rises over time; each jagged section is a revolution. The second set of labels is my own rough guess for language companies, not research.

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Books

AI Strategy for Sales Teams

with Andrew Hough and Richard Vincent · 2026

Creating Customer Value Propositions with AI

with Mark Davies and Dr Sue Holt · Kogan Page, July 2027

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