Beyond the Life Cycle: Organizational and Technological Design. I. An Alternative Perspective

The life cycle model has become part of the everyday vocabulary of management and is used as a rough simplification of rather complex phenomena. Chris DeBresson and Joseph Lampel have undertaken a thorough re-examination of the underlying assumptions of the model and propose a reformulation that they believe gives a better approximation of the dynamics of technological and organizational change. The basis for their reformulation is a survey of 4000 British and Canadian innovations in many industries over some 30 years.
In a companion article immediately following this one, the authors illustrate their reformulation by a detailed analysis of one firm in one industry.