As an Orlando Business Broker I witness the business lifecylce daily. It is sometimes sad to watch the outcome of missing the trends and riding the wave that is the Sigmoid Curve.
What is the Sigmoid Curve and why should you care? If you are a business owner, you are the only person in your organization that has a thumb on the pulse of your business’s life cycle. The Sigmoid Curve is a model for consistent business growth.
Your business is somewhere on the Sigmoid Curve. The Sigmoid Curve is used worldwide by Fortune 500 companies and small businesses alike to better understand their business’s life cycle.
The sigmoid curve is derived from the sigmoid function, an algebraic formula that shows how every growth curve will eventually plateau unless you interrupt its cycle.
The paradox for business owners is that the optimal time to interrupt a growth curve is before it reaches its peak. This is difficult because we find it counterintuitive to change something when it seems to be working perfectly fine.
However, the ability to anticipate change and make it happen before performance begins to drop off is the key to maintaining momentum in our personal lives, our teams and our organizations.
The basic premise behind the sigmoid curve is that nothing grows forever in its current structure.
Unless a business adapts or redefines their business at some point on their business journey, they will eventually decline. Think of Polaroid, Blockbuster, Blackberry or Hummer as prime examples of failed business models that did not fundamentally adjust or adapt to changes happening around them.
The dotted line above illustrates that in order for businesses to survive that they must at some point redefine and reinvent who they are, their strategies, their products and their leadership. Successful businesses redefine and reinvent while they are in a positive growth pattern,
Also consider that many business owners are at the end of their business leadership lifecycle. 12 million small businesses are owned by baby boomers that are ready to retire and these business owners are considering an array of exit strategies.
For more on selling your Orlando Small Business Call Orlando Business Broker Michael Shea at 321-287-0349 or email at mike@tworld.com