Growth stocks had a long runway in 2019, despite long stretches of volatility thanks to seesaw trade relations with China and a consistently strong dollar weighing on results. And as in most years, 2020 should provide plenty of opportunity for growth investments to thrive yet again.

If you're wondering where to start your search, just zoom in on hot or emerging trends.

Mobile payments, for instance, are expected to account for one out of every four dollars spent on American credit cards in 2020. Software has firmly supplanted hardware as the technology sector's driver thanks to the more consistent revenues it drives. And increasing sums are being spent on cloud computing, where remote servers are being leaned on to manage and process large troves of data.

Technology isn't the only place you'll find growth stocks in 2020, however. Advances in medicine make the health-care sector a source of high growth, too, and you can even find a couple pockets of explosive potential in the much-maligned retail industry.

Here, we explore the 11 best growth stocks to buy for 2020. Most of these companies were on pace to deliver double-digit revenue growth across 2019 - and each is expected to deliver sales improvement of at least 15% during the coming year.

Dropbox

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Dropbox (DBX, $17.78) is one of many companies leveraging the cloud to make a buck. Specifically, DBX provides cloud-based file storage: Rather than, say, a company needing to absorb the hardware costs necessary to stash enormous amounts of data, they instead pay Dropbox a small, regular fee to store it in their servers.

Dropbox's most recent quarter shows why it should be considered among the