According to conventional wisdom, companies resemble organisms that are intended to pass through the start-up, scale, maturity and decline. In fact, business opportunities - and not companies - to pass through these stages, and most organizations, consisting of several possibilities dressed in various stages of the life cycle. Leaders who understand this distinction can view their organization as a portfolio of opportunities that require constant shuffle balance the demands of the present and the promise of the future. The authors suggest that in assessing any possible portfolio managers should be looking for the following common pathologies: wait too long to get out of business decline, unable to save to use pieces of business, which was closed to avoid promising new markets, because of the conservative financial approach trying to scale too many opportunities for business, so that none of them receives the necessary resources, applying the same management style of the business opportunities at different stages of the life cycle, and erring on the side of loss aversion. "Hide
by Dominic Houlder, Donald N. Sull Source: MIT Sloan Management Review 11 pages. Publication Date: 01 Oct 2006. Prod. #: SMR221-PDF-ENG
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