As I mentioned before, Rostow and Kuznests and other economists and political scientists produced works in the ideological frame of the Cold War, just to give "developing" countries the needed optimism not to embrace reforms not fully accepted by capitalists. The Bretton Wodds institutions, the IMF and the WB helped with programmes (MacNamara´s Basic Needs programmes) helped with financial resources and technical assitence. As one famous British economist suggested, too often  Economics is politics in disguise.

We use Rostow Model for Pre-Launch Study of Demographics in Marketing....

Traditional Society -subsistence economy, high levels of agriculture and labor intensive agriculture, Wealth allocated to nonproductive activities (religious, military)

Started Economies -initiatives of development Investments in technology,  infrastructure and Commercial agriculture

Growing Economies -  Industrialization, Infrastructure and traditional practices

Developed Economies -  Manufacturing and commercial base, diversified, use of technology

Global Economies - Mass production in FMCG, Service industries, Welfare and Recreation

Rostow's theory helps us to understand the economic development in a society in a classical sense - something like learning Doe, Re, Mi, Fa, So, La, Ti in order to sing classical music. We know that there are many great composers/singers/traditional artists who know no classical music ; yet have produced some great pieces of music.

Economic growth is also like composing music, if I may say. A market oriented economy in which industrial production plays a predominant role may propel exceptional overall growth in country X. In country Y, it may actually be the other way around, for example the main stay could be agriculture and related produces.

So, while taking Rostow as the basis for understanding economic growth, we must study the micro/macro economic profile of a country to determine what could be the core areas for propelling economic growth in X country than merely imitate a country whose economic profile rests on different competencies.

Hope this helps. Have a great day.

Rostow's was a highly-stylised model that reflected -- very partial -- elements of the English and American experiences in the 18th and 19th centuies. The "modernization theory" that it bolstered was part of the American-led project of national economic development in the post-World War II period. Leaving aside how well that model worked, or how desirable (or undesirable) its effects were, it seems to me that if your concern is some form of development that benefits all (rather than a few) and is sustainable, a more historical approach is needed: 1) one that takes seriously the socio-ecological relations of capitalist development, in sucessive historical eras, and 2) one that understands the historical conditions of possibility in pursuing "development" in an age of global warming, biospheric crisis, and capitalist stagnation. 

My essay on failures of modernization theories starts out as follows:

Pride resulting from global dominance and spectacular scientific and technological developments led Europeans to believe that the West was the most advanced and developed of all societies. Other societies were primitive and under-developed. As these other societies matured and grew, they would follow the same stages that were followed by the West, and eventually become like modern Western societies. ..... Until the 60’s modernization theorists, like Parsons and Rostow echoed these sentiments, regarding Westernization as a desirable and inevitable process for the rest of the world. The goal of this article is to discuss some of the difficulties which led to substantial reconsideration of these naïve views.  SEE LINK BELOW to read in full

Stavrianos in Global Rift: The Third World Comes of Age argues that development and underdevelopment are opposite sides of the same coin. The West became rich because they captured the resources of the colonized world, while the colonies became poor as part of the same process. There is strong evidence for this thesis. In this case, it is impossible for us to re-trace the path taken by Britain for development (which is basically Rostows stages) because we cannot colonize a large portion of the globe and use imperial previleges to extract revenues.

https://sites.google.com/site/aznews0/home/the-news/failures-of-modernization-theories

Big thanks to the editor who helped to put this question in a better shape. @Krishnan: I didn’t know the theory is applicable in Market research. Thanks. @Srinivasan: your explanation with musical notes offers a good and simple picture of the subject. Thank you. @Jason: Thanks for the new view. I will do further studies around these two approaches. @Asad: I love your essay. It captures my personal hypotheses around these questions. Thanks for sharing the essay link.

@ Makuachukwu 

Enclosed a framework of how Rostow’s Model is used in Marketing .

I think Rostow model was never accurate and never was a model based on cientific analysis. I was a manifestó within the cold war ideology to respond to the danger of the contagion from the socialist ideology. I like much more and find more usefull the Kantors law of growth, at least more accurated to analyse the economic prospects of developing countries

Yes, it is still deal for to-day's economies. 'Sustainable Development' is the burning issue of all economies. Economic transition is must for growth and its sustainability.

Srinivasan, Asad and Alicia are spot on. Srinivasan's "musical notes" example is especially helpful, while Asad's blunt review of MT needs greater discussion.  

Free markets didn't emerge as a result of the U.S. experience, and are not inevitable to the human condition. The markets we are experiencing today are the product of the demands of war, conquest, and the result of complex historical developments and political agreements at both the local and international level.

In the modern era, the state creates the conditions under which wealth is created. Just as there is no single Rostow-like approach to developing successful economies, there are no invisible hands in our world. A long view of history makes it clear that Rostow's model is - as Alicia points out - a manifesto designed to mask larger geo-strategic interests and goals ... 

- Mark 

http://markmartinezshow.blogspot.com/2013/04/war-and-markets-why-great-wealth-is-not.html

While we're at it, Argentina's current challenges with Vulture Capitalists, a New York District Court and it's restructured debt is an excellent example of market players in the United States using the state to extract - rather than building - wealth in the developing world. This is not how "free markets" are supposed to work ... 

- Mark

http://markmartinezshow.blogspot.com/2014/07/looming-debt-default-and-vulture.html

Check out David Harvey's discussion of Rostow in his lectures on Marx's capital volume volume 2 

Making matters worse for the developing world are trade agreements that derive their intellectual spirit from Rostow-like visions of magical market harmony. 

Over 20 years ago we knew (or at least some of us knew) that without providing the resources to invest in infrastructures, or without providing support for improving the education and training levels of Mexico's workers and its rural peasant class, that the North American Free Trade Agreement (NAFTA) would not bring development to Mexico. In my first academic article I suggested that NAFTA would be little more than a corporate Trojan Horse without some form of European-like "transitional aid" to help Mexico develop and compete with the United States.

The argument was that without some type of mega-investment in people, infrastructures, and protections for labor that Mexico would not reap the gains that were promised at the time. As well, American workers would lose out as U.S. jobs went to Mexico.

This is exactly what happened. Wealth gaps in both Mexico and the U.S. have skyrocketed. Wages have stagnated in the U.S., while corporate profits have never been better.

Today, apart from increased profits for corporations doing business under NAFTA's umbrella, Mexico's countryside and border regions are beset with violence and drug lordism that have gotten progressively worse over the past 20 years. To be sure, we have seen material advances in several central states in Mexico. But these states have embraced alternative "interior port" infrastructure strategies, which include industry protections, combined with investments in education and training programs.

Mexico's working class, its rural poor and its most vulnerable groups, however, have seen few if any benefits from increased trade. Poverty has increased in Mexico. Unemployment is higher today than it was in 1994, while Mexico's total debt, which stood at $138 billion in 1994, is now over $350 billion. 

Today, we have the U.S. and other trade partners negotiating a NAFTA-like Trans-Pacific Partnership, as if we need to take NAFTA global. The challenges of development today go far beyond a misunderstanding of Rostow and include having to deal with trade agreements that favor capital but do little for labor, all the while pretending that wages, salaries and working conditions will magically work themselves out.

http://markmartinezshow.blogspot.com/2014/01/the-trans-pacific-partnership-and-nafta.html

Management Sciences takes leads form all walks of life and especially Economics is such a field seamlessly adopted into it. Rostow’s 5 Stages of growth may belong to economics, but we in marketing have customised it towards Marketing.

• Traditional - Dependent on Rural Economy
• Transitional - Dependent on Social appreciation of Education and Skill Development
• Take off - Dependent on Sub-urban Economy.
• Drive to Maturity - Dependent on Growth and Developed Economies
• High Mass consumption - Dependent on Global Economy or Market Managing Economies.

We carryout the demographic survey based on this..

The main value of Rostow's framework is in the periodization and discovery of the commonality of "take off" within a very specific historical context.  I use his chart of "take off" in classes.  But especially interesting is how he predicted wrongly on a number of country's moving toward "take off."  Let's remember that it is both a scholarly work and propaganda ("a non-communist manifesto") at the same time.

No, of course not! First, it is completely inaccurate in terms of history (let alone it does not include the violence involved from one stage of development to another). In real terms, i do not know any society, not even the British one, to have followed those stages as Rostow describes its.

Second, Rostow was not for sustainable development, he was for development (and growth) because this was the aim of his era/academic community/society.

Third, it is so capitalist-european-anglosaxon centred that i really wonder, how this theory could ever work outside context, even if one accepts that it worked one way or another f.ex. in the UK.

Fourth, it is so messianic that i cannot believe that mass consumption stage would be accepted as the last stage of development. To have mass consumption you need mass employment and decent living. Instead, even "developed" countries nowadays have a sharp decline in mass consumption that cannot be compensated with the severe exploitation and slavery or semi-slavery imposed on developing countries' workers.

Fifth, i think it comes of its own: no, no country should pass through those stages to achieve sustainable development. Actually, passing through those stages will bring such environmental and societal degradation that i do not think it would be easily reversible to a sustainable economy. Let alone the income disparities those stages involve, which means income disparities+environmental degradation=anything but sustainable economy.

As I mentioned before, Rostow and Kuznests and other economists and political scientists produced works in the ideological frame of the Cold War, just to give "developing" countries the needed optimism not to embrace reforms not fully accepted by capitalists. The Bretton Wodds institutions, the IMF and the WB helped with programmes (MacNamara´s Basic Needs programmes) helped with financial resources and technical assitence. As one famous British economist suggested, too often  Economics is politics in disguise.

It is troubling that this "cold-warrior" tract is still being seriously considered as an adequate form of understanding "development."  The notion that there are stages that countries go through cannot explain why most countries have not been able to cross the treshold of underdevelopment, and in fact actually fall backwards; it also cannot explain why inequality and environmental destruction are growing as major contradictions in the present world.

Nowadays is very difficult to demonstrate If one country follow Rostow Stages It will achieve sustainable economic growth. I think many developed countries not follow ed Rostow Stages. It`s interesting because most of them are small, they don`t have  natural resources and weather conditions are bad.

Rostow's economic growth theory holds good when we read the history of economic development of so-called rich or advanced countries. It tells the truth of process of economic development which is divided into 5 stages.

Many thanks for your contributions.

Many countries have already gone through the 5 stages and have not reached development, so now Rostow's work is only a reference reading on the subject of economic growth.

Martha Pantoja: Thanks for this fresh light. I never considered it from that view. Thanks.

Rostow's work , is one of the major historical models of economic growth. He was Director of Policy Planning in John F Kennedy Administration.

Hi friends, to further throw up figures in this study, kindly take my short survey on Economic Growth option for African economies: https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Rostow-growth-stages Your kind response will improve the output of this study. Kindly time a moment to complete this short survey. Thanks for your time and participation.

Irene Sotiropoulou

Martha Pantoja Dr. Arjun Yallappa Pangannavar Francesco Maniglio David Barkin

Not necessarily, in order to achieve economic growth, some stages can be eliminated to achieve economic growth, but it depends on the situation of each country.

Thank you Martha Pantoja . Kindly share this view in our online short survey via the link below:

https://www.surveymonkey.com/r/Rostow-growth-stages

Thanks.

Hi, thank you for inviting us to fill-in this survey. Please, have in mind that the people who live in African countries, especially the ones experiencing hardships and challenges, are the ones to have an opinion about their economies. Our (outsiders') views are of little use and relevance in this case, I think.

Most stages need to be eliminated, especially when we shift the focus from so-called economic development to sustainable and equitable socio-cultural and political-economic development.

In some cases many countries have imported agricultural products for economic growth.

It's very likely that if countries implement the 5 stages of Rostow's economic growth, sustained growth will not be achieved

the stages are based on a capitalist control and integration into the global economy with consequential unfavorable terms of trade, an exploied labor force and locak of control over a nation's resoureces. A local agroecological decentralized model is more appropriate with development of local industries to complemment process

One of the limitations of the Rostow Model is that it is assumed that economic growth is automatic, no growth can be automatic since internal and external variables and social, political and climatic factors influence, there is always a need to push it.

Yes. Rostow's stages from their 1st publication were considered a gross over simplification for those of us researchers with considerable field experience in the so called "developing" countries and large regions.