delay writing a business plan

Filed in archive Entrepreneurship on September 28, 2004

Jeffrey Cornwall analyzes why it is often a good idea to delay writing a comprehensive business plan and instead going forward with your real business:

"1. Business plans should be the last thing you do, not the first. The common wisdom seems to go like this: "I've got a great idea, so I guess I better write a business plan". Wrong.
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3. Research the market to make sure that there is really a market. Try to figure out what a customer might pay for what you want to sell. And look carefully at all of the competition to see if that market is already being nicely taken care of. And by the way, there is always competition, no matter what you try to tell me to the contrary. If the market potential is marginal, go on to your next idea.

I totally agree. A business plan can be beneficial in aligning different business objectives and help you to set targets and streamline your thoughts. But very often in early stages of a company facts change so quickly that a business plan can hardly be a "handbook" for a company, Instead it is only a picture of an idea at one point of time. And for this the work on a 50+ pages business plan is not such a good investment.