The Six Stages of Business Growth By Brad Harker
Behind every business success story is an equally inspiring tale of adversity, adaptation, and grit. While we don’t often see the many mistakes, failures, and near collapses, it is these adversities that fuel growth. At Harker Growth Partners, we experience these moments with our clients every day. Entrepreneurship is riddled with pitfalls and detours that can stifle growth. Recognizing the patterns and challenges inherent to the rollercoaster of innovation, our focus is to illuminate the checkpoints and milestones that can ensure business success. Compiling years of tales and case-studies into a single framework, these are the six stages of business growth.
Stage 1: Strategy Objective: Establish an intention and purpose for the development of the business. Every business begins with a spark of innovation or an “entrepreneurial seizure” as Michael Gerber puts it. Occasionally, however, this spark creates a blinding optimism towards key aspects of business creation and alignment. If we are not careful, we can lose objectivity and control of the purpose for which we started the business. Entrepreneurial success requires a defining strategy or intention for both short-term and long-term success. This strategy must also include longer-range checkpoints or milestones to ensure we maintain alignment as growth ensues.
Stage 2: Validation Objective: Validate product market fit and establish a scalable model of growth. “Validation” has become a buzz-word in entrepreneurship for good reason. Entrepreneurship has traditionally been viewed as a high-risk endeavor with low odds of success. Today, that trend is changing. Entrepreneurs are learning how to test ideas, share them with customers, and leverage customer feedback to refine the solution into a final product in which they can have a high level of confidence. Entrepreneurship today might be better described as demandbased innovation. Your customers are anxious to solve their challenges and will gladly tell you exactly what they need. The key is taking the time to ask them. 64 Southern Utah Business Magazine :: Summer 2022
