Developing a Business Plan - Chapter 12 - Content overview

Sep 22, 2026

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Chapter 12, “Developing a Business Plan,” explains how strategic planning relates to building a business model and how founders can translate analysis into executable choices. It clarifies the business plan’s role as a succinct prototype of the business model, used to communicate with investors and guide the first year of operations. It also links planning to a business presentation and introduces key decision areas, including product features, market share, pricing, competencies, partnerships, funding, supply chain, hiring, IT, and innovation.

LanguageEnglish

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Pages30

Reading Time11 min

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Chapter 12 Developing a Business Plan

The Business Model: Important Business Model Decisions

12.1 Purpose of the Business Plan

This is “Developing a Business Plan”, chapter 12 from the book Creating Services and Products (index.html) (v. 1.0) . This book is licensed under a Creative Commons by-nc-sa 3.0 ([http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/)[ ](http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-sa/)[3.0/](3.0/)) license. See the license for more details, but that basically means you can share this book as long as you credit the author (but see below), don't make money from it, and do make it available to everyone else under the same terms. This content was accessible as of December 29, 2012, and it was downloaded then by Andy Schmitz ([http://lardbucket.org](http://lardbucket.org)) in an effort to preserve the availability of this book. Normally, the author and publisher would be credited here. However, the publisher has asked for the customary Creative Commons attribution to the original publisher, authors, title, and book URI to be removed. Additionally, per the publisher's request, their name has been removed in some passages. More information is available on this project's attribution page ([http://2012books.lardbucket.org/attribution.html?utm_source=header](http://2012books.lardbucket.org/attribution.html?utm_source=header)). For more information on the source of this book, or why it is available for free, please see the project's home page ([http://2012books.lardbucket.org/](http://2012books.lardbucket.org/)). You can browse or download additional books there. Chapter 12 Developing a Business Plan The terms strategic planning and business plan are often used interchangeably, even though they are different. The strategic planning process is essentially the upfront activity related to generating a business model. It involves using the analytical strategic planning approaches discussed in Chapter 8 "Strategic Planning and Ten–Ten Planning", such as value chain analysis, Porter’s five-force model, theresource-based view of strategy, the technology life cycle, and SWOT analysis among othersThe SWOT analysis is rarely part of the business plan and is usually not part of the business presentation. The purpose of a SWOT analysis is to assist the founders in understating what the business is all about and where it is heading. The strengths and opportunities will of course be woven into the business plan and the business plan presentation. But there is little to be gained from focusing on the threats and the weaknesses. Indeed, a significant part of the business plan and presentation involves developing strategies for dealing with weaknesses and threats.. In Chapter 9 "The Ten–Ten Planning Process: Crafting a Business Story", we introduced an abbreviated approach to planning, called the Ten–Ten planning process that can be quickly implemented and assist in bringing focus and clarity to the entrepreneur’s vision. You are encouraged to complete the FAD template, Organizational and Industry Analysis template, Business Plan Overview template and to develop an executive summary using the material in earlier chapters before you develop a full-scale business plan. There are two reasons for this. The first reason is that the material developed during the Ten–Ten planning will be very useful in developing a focused, more complete, and better plan. The other reason for using the Ten–Ten process is that business models evolve very rapidly; sometimes it is better to let the idea incubate and to present the plan to a variety of audiences before committing and finalizing the full-blown plan. In this section, we will present a more detailed approach for constructing a fullblown business plan. The expanded business plan provides additional focus by adding details on the what, why, how, when, and for whom a product or service will be produced. The business plan is an abbreviated description of the business model (see Note 12.1 "The Business Model: Important Business Model Decisions") . The business plan is

FAQs

How is strategic planning different from a business plan in this chapter?

Strategic planning is the upfront activity used to generate a business model, while the business plan is an abbreviated description of that business model used to present and communicate decisions.

What is the main purpose of a business plan?

A business plan provides a succinct overview of what, how, when, and why, helps communicate with investors, and serves as a platform and blueprint for founders’ first-year execution.

Which decision areas does the chapter highlight for the business model?

It covers product features and mix, market share and segmentation, pricing strategy, core competencies, partnerships, funding and resources, supply chain design, hiring and retention, IT requirements, and innovation through R&D.

Sep 22, 2026

Upload by Jacob