Everything grows (or shrinks) because things are always changing. There are many specific ways to grow, but in general there are four ways: more, better, smarter, and self-controlling. These are, for the most part, in order of value, greatest to least. The "higher level" methods become valuable only when the competition matches the "lower level" methods.

More of something is always the simplest way to grow. If one thing exists, there's no reason why one more can't exist. The most basic type of growth is more stability. Less stability and something may not exist at all. You can have more things, or more of a property of something, or more parts of something, or anything else that can be counted.

If you're unable to get more, or you have so many that adding one makes no significant improvement, than you have to move on to better. Better is a different method for achieving goals, whether they be maintaining stability, or any other higher level goal. Better may be faster, or require less resources, or achieve more of the result, or better in other ways. In a competition, the better one is the winner when there are the same amount of both.

Once you've started growing better, you're also specializing in one or more goals. Different situations will have different goals, so the best for one may be the worst for another. To be competitive in all situations, you need options, and to be smart enough to choose which option to use. Smart is about information, choices, and planning for the future. Smarter things can gain, store, and process more information, have some form of self-awareness, and predict the future with more accuracy.

The last growth method is self-control, a bit different than the rest. Once you are self-aware and able to make choices you can choose not only what you do, but also how you grow. Self-controlled things can change their options in response to a predicted future, not just change their actions. Given time, the self-controlled grower can achieve any goal, as they control how much more, better, and smarter they'll be.

When something has grown to this level they generally take on unique traits and personalities. They interact so closely with their goals and competitors that they often form a new "ecosystem" and the whole group can be treated as a new individual. One that can start again to grow and develop.