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ARTICLE · 27 OCTOBER 2026

What Does It Take To Successfully Scale? Six Lessons From The 2026 BIBAs

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Scaling a business brings evolving challenges across leadership, cashflow, and culture that can make or break growth ambitions. Drawing from judging the BIBAs Scale-Up Business of the Year category...

United KingdomStrategy
Tom Smith
Tom Smith

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Our own Chris Fairhurst (far left), pictured with Group55, the winners of the BIBAs' Scale-Up Business of the Year award 2026

While scaling a business is exciting, it can also be one of the most challenging periods in the life of a company and the people running it. The best scale-up businesses make growth look straightforward from the outside. In reality, rapid expansion brings evolving challenges across people, process, leadership, cashflow and culture. Things that worked perfectly well when a business employed ten people can become much harder when there are 50, 100 or more. 

The changing dynamics of scale-up businesses was one of the things that struck me the most while judging the Scale-Up Business of the Year category at this year’s Be Inspired Business Awards (BIBAs), run by the North & Western Lancashire Chamber of Commerce, which we were proud to sponsor. 

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