Suppose you are CEO of America’s largest company, heading the Fortune 500 list in five of the past six years, with $351 b. annual sales (2006), up 11% over 2005, and $11.3 b. in net income, up nearly 1% over 2005, along with some one million employees. 

Where in the world do you find growth, after driving many of America’s smaller shops out of business?

Here is an ultra-simple innovation strategy. If you find it hard to sell “same to more” (the same goods and services to more and more customers), how about trying “more to same” (sell more, and different, goods and services to the same customers). How about, for instance, selling financial services?

On March 16 Wal-Mart withdrew its plan to create its own bank. But on June 20, it announced it will offer a range of financial services to its customers, through Wal-Mart Money Centers, including check cashing, bill payments and international money transfers. (Many of Wal-Mart’s customers are foreign-born workers, who send money home to their families). Wal-Mart may take business away from Moneygram International, US Postal Service and Western Union. 

Wal-Mart has been struggling. It has gotten bad press over discriminating against women. Its same-store sales were down 3.5 % in April, the biggest fall since 1979. And its strategy to move upscale, according to Business Week, has failed. 

Apparently, Wal-Mart’s business-model innovation, directed to financial services, is cohort-based – hoping to attract the financial business of younger people, who at times pay high rates of interest to moneylenders and look to save money in banking, just as they do in buying their clothes and food at Wal-mart.

Wal-Mart has a large, though low-to-middle income, customer base. By expanding the scope of its offerings, it hopes to restore its once-strong growth. We will watch the results closely, as a case study in innovation in America’s –and indeed, the world’s – largest business.