What is 'organic and inorganic growth' of a company?

I find these terms frequently used by investment analysts in CNBC - what do they mean by these words.

Organic Growth is a rate of the business expansion through a comapny's own business activity while Inorganic Growth means that the company has grown by mergers, acquisitions or takeovers. Organic Growth is also sometimes known as Internal Growth and inorganic as External Growth.

Organic growth is often determined as the most preferable method of business expansion, taking the essence of an existing business and then evolving it further for the better.

However, whilst seeming attractive from this evolutional aspect, organic growth is undoubtedly fraught with this risk of 'narrow vision' - what is believed in has to be right and may be based on a growth strategy that has little or no external input and which rarely receives any justification to questioning Board.

Regards,
Lotus

Organic growth is where a company grows naturally by increasing sales and profits etc.

Inorganic growth is where a company grows by other means - such as buying another company to increase it's size.