From Apple to Twitter, some of the most successful businesses are not what their inventors originally envisioned.
Nearly every aspiring entrepreneur or innovator has a business plan, and virtually all of these individuals believe that their business plan–what we call Plan A–will work. They can probably even imagine how they’ll look on the cover of Fortune or Inc. And they are usually wrong. But what separates the ultimate successes from the rest is what they do when their first plan sputters. Do they lick their wounds, get back on their feet and morph their new insights into great businesses, or do they stick to their original plan? If the founders of Google, Starbucks or PayPal had stuck to their original business plans, we’d likely never have heard of them. Instead, they made radical changes to their initial models, became household names and delivered huge returns for themselves and their investors. How did they get from their Plan A to a business model that worked? Why did they succeed when most new ventures crash and burn?
3 Comments On: A Business Plan? Or a Journey to Plan B?
what a wonderful insight to the world of business.clearly an entrepreneur needs to have more than one option to succeed. a good business plan is a recipe to reaping good returns on break even for any business.
I’d be very interested in any statistical data on how many “plan A”s made it to market intact.
Examples like Apple and Google are great for inspiration and the principle of examining your own assumptions is a fantastic one.
I’d just like to know if this applies only to hi-tech companies reaching for the sky or it is something which can be applied to small businesses such as restaurants, retail outlets, law firms, etc.
In other words, how would you test plan B when your runway is only a couple months of cash flow for a retail outlet?
Cheers,
Tristan
The concept of being creating a great business plan and being able to create a new one if plan A fails is very important and very relevant to business. However, apple, twitter and many of the large businesses mentioned had contacts and financing that no business plan would ever account for regarding the average person. Plus the reality of where the money comes from is never addressed for these large “successes” which makes much of the business plan concept a fantasy versus reality.