Most entrepreneurship programs are organized around the development of a business plan. This is understandable because the first thing entrepreneurs are asked for when they apply for a bank credit or venture capital is a business plan. So let’s check out why entrepreneurs hate business planning.
If no business planning, what then?
They make use of opportunities that arise and adapt their approach continues to the market responses. Saras Sarasvathy, a key trainer in VentureLab International, called this the “Effectuation” approach as opposed to the usual “Causation” approach in which business planning plays an important role.
Her findings are more and more recognized at entrepreneurship support centers across the world as also shows on the website of the well-recognized French educational and research institution Educaix.
Although many entrepreneurs have made a business plan one could question their attitude towards this ‘obligation’. Albert Shapiro concluded that “companies that plan do better than companies that don’t but they never follow their plan” and Mc Kinsey stated that “it is not so that winning businesses don’t make plans but they refuse to let planning become an end itself”.
Why business planning?
The added value of business planning is not to predict the future but to think about possible futures for today’s decision-making. Of all the business plans made by the entrepreneurs that I supported, I found none realized exactly according to this plan. “In fact, business planning and market research do not fit to the natural behavior of successful entrepreneurs”, is one of the conclusions of Sarasvathy.
In her research among around 30 expert entrepreneurs in the world, she found that these entrepreneurs follow another approach. They hate systematic market research and planning and prefer to discover in practice how they can be successful.
Young entrepreneurs should start their own business by writing a decent business plan and they also should learn about the principles of “Doing Well By Doing Good”.
The video above paints a pretty clear picture of what it takes to write a good and successful business plan for your startups. It is explained really step by step. So check the video once again and discover the best way to write an effective business plan for young and ambitious entrepreneurs who want to create successful and sustaining business endeavors. The video includes an 11-step plan for a Great Business Plan.
Read also this page about Professor Clayton Christensen who’s often seen at events that related to the latest and most revolutionary management developments and research. He says that generally, innovation and technology management divisions and also entrepreneurship divisions are too much focused on high-tech business development and entrepreneurship rather than on helping startups develop significant change for sustainable business growth.
Well, the fact of the matter is that so many people are scared of failure. This is, however, the main reason why they won’t be successful in the first place! The Fear of Failure. Well, it is a fact that if we look at so many of those people who are successful and rich, we can see that most of them experienced failures before they became successful. They all failed first.