What to think through before starting a business plan
Sudhanshu Rai, Professor, Copenhagen Business School
Kristjan Jespersen, PhD Fellow, Copenhagen Business School
A good business plan reflects upon four different and distinct points: aspirations, leadership, integration and society. These are components and ideas that a business creator, an entrepreneur has to sit down and think about.
1. Aspirations: Aspirations need to be clarified before you start writing your business plan. Where do you want to be in six months, fives years or one year? If an entrepreneur has ambiguity about this aspirational question, that ambiguity will translate into the business plan.
2. Leadership: Your leadership style needs to become visible in the business plan. The organization that you build is very much derived - it derives its energy from the creator of the organization. So, your style, your philosophy of leadership, your belief in a leadership, has to be very aligned to the organization you create.
3. Ability to integrate: Integration describes what resources you pull from where? Resources mean human resources, information resources, technology resources and all other kinds of resources. What are your integrational skills? How do you integrate all these available resources if there are and if there are not, where do you get them, and how do you get them? You have to explore this, the more you explore in detail the better your business plan would look.
4. Society: You can't have aspirations, leadership, integration without society. Describe how your business plan will impact society. How your role, your idea, your aspirations, your ability to integrate is having impact on society? What role you are playing in society? How is society going to react with your presence and with your endeavors? How will society reward you? And you have to build that into the business plan too, because the society is the playing canvas in which you have to apply your art or apply your entrepreneurial skill. And it is the society that will reward you or not. So, you have to take a very reflective view on society, its abilities, its needs, and how it can reward you.
Business plan is never a static document, its a living document, particularly in social business. It needs to evolve and change. It is not just document to be used for fund raising, but it is also a guiding document. It is also a reflective document that allows you to reflect on your goals and achievements.
A good business plan reflects upon four different and distinct points: aspirations, leadership, integration and society. These are components and ideas that a business creator, an entrepreneur has to sit down and think about.
1. Aspirations: Aspirations need to be clarified before you start writing your business plan. Where do you want to be in six months, fives years or one year? If an entrepreneur has ambiguity about this aspirational question, that ambiguity will translate into the business plan.
2. Leadership: Your leadership style needs to become visible in the business plan. The organization that you build is very much derived - it derives its energy from the creator of the organization. So, your style, your philosophy of leadership, your belief in a leadership, has to be very aligned to the organization you create.
3. Ability to integrate: Integration describes what resources you pull from where? Resources mean human resources, information resources, technology resources and all other kinds of resources. What are your integrational skills? How do you integrate all these available resources if there are and if there are not, where do you get them, and how do you get them? You have to explore this, the more you explore in detail the better your business plan would look.
4. Society: You can't have aspirations, leadership, integration without society. Describe how your business plan will impact society. How your role, your idea, your aspirations, your ability to integrate is having impact on society? What role you are playing in society? How is society going to react with your presence and with your endeavors? How will society reward you? And you have to build that into the business plan too, because the society is the playing canvas in which you have to apply your art or apply your entrepreneurial skill. And it is the society that will reward you or not. So, you have to take a very reflective view on society, its abilities, its needs, and how it can reward you.
Business plan is never a static document, its a living document, particularly in social business. It needs to evolve and change. It is not just document to be used for fund raising, but it is also a guiding document. It is also a reflective document that allows you to reflect on your goals and achievements.
This blog post is based on my learnings from the course on ‘social entrepreneurship’ offered by Copenhagen Business School through Coursera (2014).
Comments
Post a Comment