

VCs Pay Business Plans Little Heed, Study Finds - snewe
http://www.nytimes.com/2009/05/14/business/smallbusiness/14hunt.html?_r=1&8dpc

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10ren
I'm more interested in whether _reality_ pays heed to business plans... did
Google, IBM, Microsoft, Apple, Xerox, HP, Ford, Bell, Edison have business
plans? Is there a correlation? Or maybe an inverse one?

The article seems to be saying that a "business plan" can help you see what
the competitive landscape is at the moment. So it's not so much a "plan" for
the future, but a picture of reality now.

It's similar to how I've started solving coding problems: to write down what
the _things_ are. This is not itself the solution, but it helps me to see
clearly by removing so many factors, and then I can come up with a solution. I
think it has a similar basis to what Fred Brooks said about complexity being
easier to understand when represented as tables (objects, structs) than as
flowcharts (code).

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SapphireSun
How much effort should one put into a business plan then (once the idea is
solidified in their head)? Where is the point of diminishing returns? Is it
still worthwhile to do a five year forecast (especially when it's highly
unlikely things will go as you plan (for better or worse) over that much
time)?

