Stages theory of entrepreneurship
The entrepreneurial process is often conceptualized as stage-based or as a life cycle. These theories are borrowed from biology where life cycles of flora and fauna are studied extensively. Thus, perhaps it is alright to think of this borrowing as a kind of analogy - imperfect, but potentially interesting. In ecology and biology, there are stages of development or decay present in many phenomena. These theories start with the assumptions of birth, growth, maturity and decline. The description, explanation and prediction of cycles is one of the mainstays of the hard sciences. By definition a life has a beginning and an end, which provides initial boundary conditions for the theory. What happens in between, or those inner-transitions, are where we are going to find most of the action in terms of debate. Kazanjian and Drazin (1990) suggest four stages to explain how an entrepreneurial opportunity becomes a business. They propose that the drivers and resistors of entrepreneurship are d