201 SEM - How_to_write_a_great_business_plan_HBR_1997201 SEM-如何撰写商业计划书1997.pdfVIP

How to Write a Great Business Plan by William A. Sahlman Harvard Business Review Reprint 97409 Which information belongs – and which doesn’t – may surprise you. How to Write a Great by William A. Sahlman Few areas of business attract as much attention Nothing could be further from the truth. In my as new ventures, and few aspects of new-venture experience with hundreds of entrepreneurial start- creation attract as much attention as the business ups, business plans rank no higher than 2– on a scale plan. Countless books and articles in the popular from 1 to 10 – as a predictor of a new venture’s suc- press dissect the topic. A growing number of annual cess. And sometimes, in fact, the more elaborately business-plan contests are springing up across the crafted the document, the more likely the venture United States and, increasingly, in other countries. is to, well, flop, for lack of a more euphemistic word. Both graduate and undergraduate schools devote What’s wrong with most business plans? The an- entire courses to the subject. Indeed, judging by all swer is relatively straightforward. Most waste too the hoopla surrounding business plans, you would much ink on numbers and devote too little to the think that the only things standing between a information that really matters to intelligent in- would-be entrepreneur and spectacular success are vestors. As every seasoned investor knows, finan- glossy five-color charts, a bundle of meticulous- cial projections for a new company – especially de- looking spreadsheets, and a decade of month-by- tailed, month-by-month projections that stretch month financial projections. out for more than a year – are an act of imagination. An entrepreneurial ventu