An Introduction to Business Plan Writing

Kai Hockerts, Professor, Copenhagen Business School

The goal of a business plan:

1. To align your team members' expectations, visions and missions.
2. Provides an operational plan, which outlines which steps you will have to walk through on your way towards starting the social enterprise.
3. A way of communicating externally and internally what your organization is about.
4. A business plan is about attracting funding.
5. Might also be used for merger of your organization or acquisitions by a larger social enterprise.

What do readers typically look for in a business plan?

1. How the founders link together. How detailed oriented the founders are?
2. How big is the market that this social enterprise wants to serve. Is there a sustainable competitive advantage for your social enterprise?
3. How you plan to grow and replicate your social enterprise. What does your road map look like for the years ahead?
4. Financial projections: a key part of a business plan.

Other things to keep in mind:

1. You need to make your business plan user friendly, easy to read.
2. Describe processes on what will happen if any of founders decide to leave the venture.

This blog post is based on my learnings from the course on ‘social entrepreneurship’ offered by Copenhagen Business School through Coursera (2014).