The Company Lifecycle - from Russia with love?

Is the cycle of life for a company universal?
Recent research from the Russian retail service sector suggests some strong commonalities.

Four fundamentals of expansion

"In this book we tried to find and explain characteristics, features and reasons of expansion of the service sector in Russia over the last decade. And our research was based on four fundamental points."

1. New management approaches

"Firstly, over the last hundred years the world economy has gone through a revolution in the service industry. Greater significance of human factor and automation demands of companies to change management approaches since traditional management theories based on manufacturing experience which dominated in the 20th century are least appropriate for service companies. "

2. Defined stages demand different management systems

"Secondly, any service company as well as any company in the world passes through defined stages of growth, progress and regression during its life-cycle. Theory of organization’s life-cycle enables managers to understand what kind of a managerial approach is essential at different stages of a company’s life to stay successful on the market."

3. System and structure must constantly correspond to each other

"Thirdly, at every stage of a company’s life-cycle, the features of management system of the company and the structure of key audiences are constantly changing, but always need to correspond to each other. This principle of correlation of two systems resembles the principle of rotation of electric generator, consisting of induction coil and magnets. If size of induction coil corresponds to the size of magnets, electric generator can produce electricity. In our case, if characteristics of management system correspond to the structure of key audiences at every stage of company’s life-cycle, such company can “generate” profit."

4. The devil is in the details

Fourthly, key factors affecting service quality and other attributes can differ depending on the type of retail service.

Source:  http://www.russianservicebook.ru/eng.html

While the full eBook is only available in Russian, the Web overview is still quite insightful.
The analogy of an electric generator driving change is, to say the least, unique.  You be the judge of whether or not the analogy works.  Certainly worth a read if you are interested in the topic of company lifecycle.