درباره این اپیزود
What if your best growth year was never really yours - just the market doing the work? In this episode of The CX Algorithm, Dr Eslam Afifi sits down with Jonathan Rabiei (Senior Global Marketing & Strategy Manager, Cabot Corporation) to pull apart one of the most comfortable illusions in business: that a rising market is proof you are good at growth.
When demand outstrips supply, growth hides everything - weak pricing, a clogged innovation pipeline, thinning customer intimacy, and a business that looks like it is winning while it quietly stops earning. When the tide goes out, the same organisation is left staring at the experience it was always shipping. Drawing on more than 18 years across specialty and battery materials, Jonathan reframes growth not as a sales target but as a whole-company system - the way R&D, operations, supply chain, commercial and finance together create, deliver and capture value.
You will hear the five blind spots a booming market hides, the four questions that separate real growth from a tailwind, and how Jonathan turned a "flat", written-off polymer segment into a core business in three years. He explains why retention is engineered far upstream - not defended with discounts at the exit - using a Suez Canal supply shock that became genuine customer stickiness, and why efficiency, done with focus, is simply growth by another name.
If you work in customer experience, growth, marketing, strategy, product, B2B or industrial markets, this episode gives you a practical way to find growth when the market stops handing it over.
In this episode, you will learn:
- Why a rising market hides organisational weakness, and what stagnation exposes
- Who really owns growth in a company (and why it is not the sales team)
- The five blind spots: operations, customers, innovation, environment and economics
- Four questions that separate genuine growth from a market tailwind
- Where growth comes from when acquisition and expansion are exhausted
- How to turn a "flat", mature segment into a core business
- Retention as an engineered, upstream discipline, not an exit-time discount
- Why efficiency plus focus becomes a growth lever in a down market
ABOUT THE GUEST
Jonathan Rabiei is Senior Global Marketing & Strategy Manager at Cabot Corporation, where he leads strategy, the innovation pipeline, market intelligence and market communication in the fast-growing battery materials market. Over more than 18 years in specialty materials he has moved from sales and business development into global growth leadership - as a segment leader, strategic marketing lead, innovation leader, strategic lead on a major capital investment, and director of strategic business development, including both the technical and commercial sides of mergers and acquisitions due diligence. He believes growth is owned by no single function, but by how an entire company creates, delivers and captures value. He holds an MSc in Chemical Engineering from Chalmers University of Technology and an Executive MBA from IE Business School.
ABOUT THE SHOW
The CX Algorithm, hosted by Dr Eslam Afifi, explores how people, data, technology and design combine into customer experiences that actually work - moving past the hype to the engineering underneath.
ABOUT THE HOST
Dr Eslam Afifi is a customer experience, data and insights leader with 15+ years across financial services, government and travel in Australia, Europe and the Gulf. He holds a PhD from Monash University on developing customer experience and marketing strategies using AI and machine learning, an Executive MBA from IE Business School, and three Australian CX Awards. He created The CX Algorithm to explore how people, data and technology combine into customer experiences that actually work.
Full episode notes, transcript and chapters: thecxalgorithm.com
