Does Business Planning Help: What 46 Studies Say.
Does business planning help small firms? A 2010 meta-analysis pooling 46 studies found that planning is beneficial. However, that finding cannot justify another year of the same preparing. The real question is whether your work can end.
The strongest argument for planning.
In 2010 the Journal of Business Venturing published a meta-analysis by Jan Brinckmann, Dietmar Grichnik and Diana Kapsa. This business planning meta analysis pooled 46 separate studies of planning in small firms. Their pooled answer was positive, and it is the largest single piece of evidence on this question. Also, the author admits reading only the abstract, so the method stays closed.
Does business planning help your last four years.
So does business planning help explain the years you already spent? Yes, according to the best evidence in the field. If you keep asking "is preparation wasted time?", the honest answer here is no. Most of what you learned is real, and some of it is genuinely rare.
Why the finding cuts both ways.
However, the research works in two directions at once. You cannot dismiss four years as avoidance and feel terrible about them. But you also cannot hold up the result as permission for a fifth identical year. Both moves feel almost the same tonight, and only one is honest.
In short, the question of does business planning help is not the one this chapter asks. Instead, it asks whether the work in front of you can end.
Move past does business planning help tonight.
Write one line listing what your preparation has genuinely taught you so far.
Then write whether tonight's planned activity has any point where it would end.
From the book.
Take the plain version and take it seriously, because it matters more to you than it does to me. If you've spent four years preparing and somebody now tells you those four years were wasted, they are arguing against the best evidence in the field and you should not believe them. Preparing is not the disease. Most of what you have learned is real, some of it is genuinely rare, and a fair amount of it is going to be the reason this works when it finally goes.
I Want to Start a Business but I Never Actually Start, chapter 5: Preparation and its stop condition
Questions about does business planning help.
Does business planning help small firms, according to the research?
A 2010 meta-analysis of 46 studies in the Journal of Business Venturing found planning beneficial. The author has read only its abstract.
Were my years of preparing wasted?
Not according to the best evidence in the field. Much of what you learned is real and may help when you finally launch.
Can the research justify another year of preparing?
No. Because the finding cuts both ways, it cannot serve as permission for a fifth year of the same evenings.
Read the whole chapter.
This lesson covers one section of chapter 5, “Preparation and its stop condition”. The book goes further, with the full evidence, the stories and every exercise.
Lessons in this chapter.
- 01 Preparation Without a Finish Line: Spot It Tonight.
- 02 Does Business Planning Help: What 46 Studies Say.
- 03 Business Plan Survival Study: Why It Cannot Grade You.
- 04 Set a Stop Rule in Advance: Thirty-One Days to a Sale.
- 05 Side Project That Never Ends: Why Nobody Is Waiting.
- 06 Write a Stop Condition: What Arrives, From Whom.
- 07 Waiting for Permission to Start: Name Who You Need.