How To Write A Great Business Plan

Exerpted from: William Sahlman, Harvard Business Review, July - August 1997

If you want to speak the language of investors - and also make sure that you have asked yourself the right questions before setting out on the most daunting journey of a businessperson's career - I recommend basing your business plan on the framework that follows. It does not provide the kind of 'winning' formula touted by some current how-to books and software programs for entrepreneurs. Nor is it a guide to brain surgery. Rather, the framework systematically assesses the four interdependent factors critical to every new venture:

The People - the men and women starting and running a venture, as wekk as the outside parties providing key services or important resources for it, such as its lawyers, accountants, and suppliers.

The Opportunity  - a profile of the business itself: what it will sell and to whom, whether the business can grow and how fast, what its economics are, who and what stand in the way of success.

The Context - the big picture: the regulatory environment, interest rates, demographic trends, inflation and the like. Basically, factors that inevitably change but cannot be controlled by the entrepreneur.

Risk and Reward - an assessment of everything that can go wrong and right, and a discussion of how the entrepreneurial team can respond.

For the full article in pdf, click here.

Learning from the Germans

A recent  article on The Economist talks about the German Economy, and specifically small German companies, and how they optimised globalization to their advantage by finding niches and developing good outsourcing practices.

From low unemployment rates to conservative mortgage practices, from maintaining high exports even as China's rises to producing goods in niche industries that the growing Chinese market wants, and generous backing by the governement, the Germans have emerged as the strongest country in the G7 in the past decade.

To read the rest of the article on The Economist, please click here.

Sources: Freakonomics, The Economist