In my experience, the key to the success of a company is to be market-oriented and not product-oriented.
Many times, companies are so "in love" with their products, or so confident with their products, that they fail to see that the market is changing, and accordingly, their product is not relevant anymore.
For example, in the beginning, all coca-cola beverages contained only sugar; with time, when obesity and/or fitness became an issue, coca-cola started manufacturing diet/light beverages to satisfy this demand.
This was just an example to show that in order to succeed, a company must be tuned to the changing demands and trends of the market, and accordingly to change, or adjust new products.
In order to be able to do so, there has to be a good executive team, with good relationships between them, including young people to spot the changing trends, but also more adult people to bring their experience and knowledge.
Also, the company has to run every once in a while market researches, which can give insight about the market changes.

This is a vast topic. Growth and success depend on various factors. Few of them are - 
1. Understanding the market at the right time. We know that Nokia could not see what is coming and paid the price. 
2. Strong product and customer support. Customers become loyal to a great customer support. Apple is an example. 
3. Flexible human resource policies for the employees. Needless to say - happy staff brings more success. Google is an example. 
4. Ready to adopt the change. Make a good team to execute the ideas. 
5. All deals should be win-win deals. The customer should be equally satisfied with you in all the deals.

• Have a plan and a B plan
• Understand markets and consumers
• Be open to new opportunities
• Analyze Strengths and weaknesses, opportunities and threats (SWOT analysis)
• Communicate your vision and be reliable
• Delegate, motivate, educate, compensate and celebrate

Strong Team, Solving a real Need, and building superb marketing systems. Surround yourselves with great people that are there to help you throughout the journey and enjoy the way.

I echo the comments regarding external focus whoever your customer is. There is also power in thinking beyond your traditional / current customer when thinking about opportunities for business growth. Understanding the journey of your customer and immersing yourself in that journey is key. Framing the total addressable problem (TAP) vs. the total addressable market is another way to explode the opportunity / look at it in a different way.

There are lots of tools and approaches to use - listening to the conversations that your customer are having on/offline is key. Creating opportunities for co-creation, open innovation - hackathons, quickfire challenges etc. are great ways to feed the innovation funnel.

Once ideas get into the funnel you need to ensure that you have leadership commitment (should be in their objectives so they are measured and accountable) as well as mechanisms and processes that allow innovation to thrive in a way that is protected from the core and which can be brought into the core (when / where it makes sense). Dedicated small teams (we call them 2 pizza teams) that are co-located (ideally) and empowered to drive (and kill) ideas quickly through agile experimentation.

Happy to share more if you have specific questions

regards

rick

For my two cents I would encourage any company seeking sustainable growth to have invested sufficiently to generate new products and services that will expand the revenue streams. Failure to have the next great thing(s) already at some stage of development, or alliances, partnerships, and perhaps acquisitions of Intellectual Property that complements or enhances the core IP portfolio, is essential. We witness too many companies focused on milking a market beyond the point of a return on investment that shows they do not value their future. The company also has to have individuals who are exceptional at pulling together disparate thoughts, seeing the landscape differently, and able to ideate new things that can be assessed for their future contribution to the revenue base. Failure to have more than one of those people sparking new ideas results in a slow death.