I often get asked how products like Facebook do it—grow so fast and so organically. Facebook possesses four messaging attributes that can be difficult to come by individually, let alone in one package:

1. A universally appealing value proposition
2. The network effect (where the value proposition grows even stronger as individuals bring their friends into the fold)
3. A user experience that is second to none (yes, amazing design is a messaging variable)
4. A “price” that is free.

Even still, the growth of sites like Facebook is never 100% viral, because media support is always present—a factor caused, of course, by their rapid growth rates.

A few years ago,BusinessWeek recounted how, in a joint survey with the Boston Consulting Group, one thousand senior managers ranked slow development times as the number one obstacle to innovation. Innovation, the publication said, is about selecting and executing the right ideas and bringing them to market in record time (Jena McGregor, “The World’s Most Innovative Companies,” BusinessWeek, April 24, 2006).

A critical success factor is so essential to achieving a desired outcome that if it’s missing, or falls below an acceptable range, your project is destined to fail.

D. Ronald Daniel of McKinsey & Company started the discussion about critical success factors in 1961, and Jack Rockart of MIT gave it renewed and expanded life in 1986. Every aspect of your business has at least some critical success factors. What they are depends on what you’re trying to do and its scope. They can apply to one specific task, or they can apply to your business in its entirety. They can be specific and unique or they can be broad and universal.

Once in place, critical success factors become ideal “filters” for subsequent decision making.

In January, 2010, another major consulting firm, McKinsey & Company, announced that it had surveyed over 300 employees at 28 leading products companies.

Once again, there were three fundamental new product development lessons that emerged: the most successful companies develop clear project goals, they emphasize cultural behaviors that lead to success, and they build strong relationships with customers. Companies that employed these principles were twice as likely to meet ROI targets.

For simplicity, we’ll distill those practices down to three core words: Goals, Culture, and Customers.

Years ago, a major consulting firm, Arthur Andersen, started a database of best practices for business activities. Later, after information and experience had accumulated through many years and possibly thousands of implementations, clients asked if any fundamental lessons had emerged from the more than thirty thousand pages of insight.

The response was yes, there were three things that stood out. The most successful companies were highly focused on building strong and lasting relationships with customers, they constantly improved their own businesses at all levels, and they used processes to keep those two main objectives running smoothly.

For simplicity, we’ll distill those practices down to three core words: Relationships, Proactive, and Processes.

Shortly after I began collecting background material for my book, I came across a press release from Bain & Company with this headline: “Less Complex Companies Grow Nearly Twice as Fast as Competitors.”

Bain examined the complexity of product and service offerings across a range of companies. Too many choices—product proliferation—were impeding customer action and a sure sign of lack of customer understanding. “Complexity is often a company’s largest hidden liability,” according to Bain’s head of global performance improvement practice.

Less complex companies grew revenue 1.7 times faster than their peers, reduced costs and accelerated customer decisions.