Unless you have tested the assumptions in your business model first, outside the building, your business plan is just creative writing.
Business plans are the tool existing companies use for execution. They are the wrong tool to search for a business model.
Interpretation
What this quote means
Business plans are useful for executing a company's strategy but not for finding a viable business model.
Steve Blank emphasizes that while business plans serve as an important operational tool for established companies, they fall short when it comes to developing the foundational ideas and strategies that form a successful business model. Entrepreneurs should focus on exploring and testing their concepts rather than relying solely on traditional business plans, which may not adequately capture the uncertainties and dynamics of starting a business.
Themes
In practice
Example use cases
In a presentation about entrepreneurship, one could use this quote to illustrate the difference between execution and discovery in developing a business.
More from Steve Blank
All quotes →People talk about getting lucky breaks in their careers. I’m living proof that the “lucky breaks” theory is simply wrong. You get to make your own luck... The world is run by those who show up…not those who wait to be asked.
You need to ask yourself, ‘Where do you want to work: startups, mid-size or large companies?’ If you find yourself debating the ‘startup versus large company’ choice you’ve already chosen the big company. Entrepreneurship isn’t a career choice it’s a passion and obsession.
We now know that something between 85 and 90 percent of most software product features are unwanted and unneeded by customers. That is an enourmous ammount of waste of time and money that ends up on the floor.
Greatest risk is not development of new product, but development of customers and markets
Build and they will come’ is not a strategy, it’s a prayer.
Similar quotes
Conscious business.. business that is conscious of inner and outer worlds.. would therefore be business that takes into account body, mind, and spirit in self, culture, and nature. Put differently, conscious business would be mindful of the way that the spectrum of consciousness operates in the Big Three worlds of self and culture and nature.
Managing a business, small or large, today requires an extremely disciplined, thoughtful approach with regard to the pressure that people are under.
Conscious means "having an awareness of one's inner and outer worlds; mentally perceptive, awake, mindful." So "conscious business" might mean, engaging in an occupation, work, or trade in a mindful, awake fashion. This implies, of course, that many people do not do so. In my experience, that is often the case. So I would definitely be in favor of conscious business; or conscious anything, for that matter.
No young kid growing up dreams of someday becoming a businessman. He wants to be a fireman, a sponsored athlete or a forest ranger The Lee Iacoccas, Donald Trumps, and Jack Welchs of the business world are heroes to no one except other businessmen with similar values.
Too often, executive compensation in the U.S. is ridiculously out of line with performance. That won't change, moreover, because the deck is stacked against investors when it comes to the CEO's pay. The upshot is that a mediocre-or-worse CEO - aided by his handpicked VP of human relations and a consultant from the ever-accommodating firm of Ratchet, Ratchet and Bingo - all too often receives gobs of money from an ill-designed compensation arrangement.
If you can tune into the fantasy life of an 11-year-old girl, you can make a fortune in this business.