Business Strategy
The Five Stages of Business Growth
Stage 1: Existence In this stage the main problems of the business are obtaining customers and delivering the product or service contracted for. Among the key questions are the following: Can we get enough customers, deliver our products, and provide services well enough to become a viable business? Can we expand from that one key customer or pilot production process to a much broader sales base? Do we have enough money to cover the considerable cash demands of this start-up phase? The organization is a simple one—the owner does everything and directly supervises subordinates, who should be of at [...]