What determines the growth rate of a cell? Is there a common law that describes the connection between size at birth and growth rate for all balanced-growing cells? How exponential growth at all possible? In this talk I will offer a novel systems analysis perspective on these biological questions. I will explain two generic methods to accelerate a complex assembly process beyond its critical path duration - the duration of the longest serial process that is bound to occur. I will then apply these ideas to the process of cellular self-replication and derive a novel type of growth law relating the doubling rate of a cell with the number of progenies concurrently under production, and the critical path duration.