Nov 16 2012
Planning a business plan.
With the Comm group projects in full swing, it seemed like a good time to write about business plans. In Steve Blank’s blog, he has one entry entitled “9 Deadly Start Up Sins”, and it just so happens that business plans made the list.
“5. Writing a business plan that doesn’t allow for trial and error”
After spending a good amount of time looking over my groups assigned business plan, this comes as no surprise to me. As much as one would want their company to be properly represented in the best way possible, there is still a lot of hypothesizing that goes into business plans. There needs to be room for trial and error because, as learned in class, business plans are constantly being upgraded and changed with time. Also, there is no way of knowing 100% what the outcome is going to be, it is all just projected guesses on what customers are going to demand and there is no certainty until a company is in full swing and exact figures can be looked at. This isn’t meant to take away from the importance of a business plan, but rather to reinforce the fact that they really are “plans” and room for trial and error isn’t a bad idea. As Steve Blank puts it, “No business plan survives first contact with customers… It’s not a crisis, it’s part of the road to success.”
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