The conventional growth curve for the organizational life cycle is an S-curve. Using this businesses risk becoming stuck as bureaucratic institutions, which are highly likely to fail in the face of crises, such as war or pandemics, or on encountering changes in their market.
David K Hurst has challenged this conventional business life cycle with his Organizational Ecocycle, which uses an infinity-shaped model inspired by the cycle of life, death and renewal within a temperate forest in nature.
Hurst’s ecocycle introduces a “Sweet Zone”, which hovers between the spiral traps of poverty and rigidity. Staying in this sweet zone requires both Strategic Management and Creative Leadership depending on the situation.
Within the sweet zone creative leadership encourages outbreaks of “Forest Fire” in the form of Positive Deviance (disruptive thinking), that act as breeding grounds for new thinking, creativity and innovation.
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