Revisiting the Business Life-Cycle

In this article, the authors offer a critique of 26 different models of the business life-cycle. They find that the models lack clarity in the specification of their stages, blur the distinction between the entrepreneur and the business, suffer from inconsistencies and biases, and suggest that movement through their stages is inevitable. The authors maintain that a new model is needed that unmistakably bounds these stages so that a company's position can clearly be assessed in order to facilitate efficient and effective business development. With this in mind, they propose an actionable six-stage constructivist model and discuss its implications for improved practice and research.