The other functions provide important supporting roles like manufacturing and quality management, management information and control systems, and human resource management.

Near the end of the hyper growth stage, these other functions will need to be strengthened so that the capabilities are at par with the lead ones.

This quick growth spurt can last from two to five years for a product or innovation before it starts to moderate.

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The Maturity Stage. For the product, the maturity stage is indicated by obsolescence.

For the firm, its final indicator is slowing or flat growth. Early indicators include sluggish organizational response to change or initiatives.

At this stage, the challenges and opportunities become more nuanced and complex than just better functional management.

These could include product line rationalization and the addition of new product, refreshing the organization possibly including removing dead wood from the organization, and set up of more robust management information and control systems all residing in a working middle management to run the bigger size and older venture.

Knowing the reality of changes that emerge from life cycles, change management can be ameliorated through the proactive and judicious implementation of right life cycle decisions.

It ought to involve preparation for the entrepreneur-manager in terms of the compound skill sets, way beyond the functional.

Failure to adapt and change can lead to the eventual decline or even demise of the venture.

The Decline Stage. For the firm, I prefer to call this the Next stage even if the underlying, original product may be in extremis.

This is because, the brilliant entrepreneur may have by this time developed a new lead product or refreshed the organization for more challenges, or installed a working middle management.

To me, this Next stage for the firm, therefore, can involve such decisions as succession, mergers and acquisitions, sell-out, philanthropy, or further growth and expansion.

Any of this can involve new products.

Each of these decisions representing opportunities require a different set of skills, beyond the functional, that the entrepreneur-manager needs to be prepared for in advance.

Conclusion. Each of the stages, for the firm, is fraught with challenges.

The products involved are better managed to come, stay and go as part of a portfolio of opportunities that the firm takes advantage of as it goes through a managed approach to a cycle of growth and more growth.

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