Large, well-established companies in need of long-term growth often turn to M&A. Kraft Foods and Heinz, AB Inbev and SABMiller, or Royal Dutch Shell and British Gas come to mind. Yet the typical M&A and postmerger integration (PMI) approach has a famously poor track record: close to 60% of M&As fail to create value. What needs to change?

It starts with re-thinking the objectives for M&A and the post-merger period. Companies should look beyond the typical goals of size, scale and efficiency – and instead seek to rebuild their capacity for growth. We call this path “postmerger rejuvenation.”

Why? In today’s fast-changing, unpredictable environments, companies must simultaneously exploit existing profitable business models to run their core business and also explore new products, markets, and models to drive growth. As companies grow and age, many succeed by optimizing for one successful model of growth and profit. They are highly efficient at what they do, but struggle to do anything new. In short, they lose their exploratory drive. But some manage to keep or regain it—they rejuvenate. What does rejuvenation mean in practice?