Business Phases of the S-Curve v1.3.4

Years ago, one of my mentors, David Morgenthaler, an iconic venture capitalist and founder of Morgenthaler Ventures ( http://bit.ly/2rXuF99 ), gave me valuable advice. To explain the challenges ahead, David told me, rely on the S-curve. An S-Curve describes how living systems change over time. A sociologist, Everett Rogers, first applied these ideas to the diffusion of innovation in the 1960s. In the 1980’s a McKinsey consultant, Richard Foster, used the S-Curve in his book, Innovation: The Attacker’s Advantage. In the 1990s, management thinkers Charles Handy and Geoffrey Moore made use of the S-curve in their writings. And more recently, two consultants from Accenture have written a book, Jumping the S-Curve, to explain how this simple model provides powerful insights. Not surprisingly, then, as we begin building out a network of Agile Strategy Labs, I found the S-Curve a useful way to describe how management challenges shift over time. There are four basic phases: 1) recombinant innovation 2) business model development 3) continuous improvement; and 4) release. We are aligning our work to these phases. Here's an early version, as we work this through. Feel free to e-mail me with your thoughts at the College of Business, University of North Alabama: [email protected]