How to Write a Great Business Plan
How to Write a Great Business Plan

Author: William A. Sahlman

Publisher: Harvard Business Review Press

Published: 2008-03-01

Total Pages: 73

ISBN-13: 1633691314

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Judging by all the hoopla surrounding business plans, you'd think the only things standing between would-be entrepreneurs and spectacular success are glossy five-color charts, bundles of meticulous-looking spreadsheets, and decades of month-by-month financial projections. Yet nothing could be further from the truth. In fact, often the more elaborately crafted a business plan, the more likely the venture is to flop. Why? Most plans waste too much ink on numbers and devote too little to information that really matters to investors. The result? Investors discount them. In How to Write a Great Business Plan, William A. Sahlman shows how to avoid this all-too-common mistake by ensuring that your plan assesses the factors critical to every new venture: The people—the individuals launching and leading the venture and outside parties providing key services or important resources The opportunity—what the business will sell and to whom, and whether the venture can grow and how fast The context—the regulatory environment, interest rates, demographic trends, and other forces shaping the venture's fate Risk and reward—what can go wrong and right, and how the entrepreneurial team will respond Timely in this age of innovation, How to Write a Great Business Plan helps you give your new venture the best possible chances for success.

Good Business
Good Business

Author: Bill Novelli

Publisher: JHU Press

Published: 2021-02-02

Total Pages: 389

ISBN-13: 1421440431

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An inspiring and practical look inside the mind of Bill Novelli, one of the founders of social marketing, Good Business challenges all of us to change the world for the better and is a blueprint for tackling today's critical issues. From his humble beginnings selling soap in a sales training program to his rapid rise in the fast-paced New York advertising scene, Bill Novelli was well on his way to becoming a leader in the hypercompetitive business world. But it wasn't long before he became disillusioned with the drive for profits at any cost. He knew that his marketing skills made those companies successful, but what good did that success do for the world? That question sent him on a career path that involved taking the marketing and communication tactics long used by big businesses and applying them to social change. He found that this strategy was not only good for the world but also good for business. In Good Business, Novelli begins with his early career success in Mad Men–era marketing, which left him feeling unfulfilled. He describes the process of changing career trajectory: how he helped reposition the Peace Corps; built Porter Novelli, a global PR agency for social impact; fought the Tobacco Wars; and became CEO of AARP, the largest nonprofit in America. Drawing practical lessons and principles from play-by-play stories of his experiences in large and small organizations, Novelli deploys his characteristic wit to stress the importance of building and maintaining connections with people—and engaging them in the cause. Good Business, which is part behind-the-scenes look at crafting social and health policy, part inspirational guide, proves that you can do well (creating economic and financial success for yourself and your company or organization) by doing good (helping to solve the world's and society's major problems). Throughout the book, Novelli shows that you can make a positive social difference regardless of what business you are in or where you are in your career. Readers will come away with the message that anyone who wants to have a positive impact on the world can do it right now from where they are—or can be inspired by Novelli's story to make the leap to somewhere they can.

What's Good for Business
What's Good for Business

Author: Kim Phillips-Fein

Publisher: OUP USA

Published: 2012-04-10

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0199754004

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This book provides a sweeping interpretation of how business mobilized to influence public policy and elections since World War II.

Motivation
Motivation

Author: Brian Tracy

Publisher: AMACOM Div American Mgmt Assn

Published: 2013

Total Pages: 131

ISBN-13: 0814433111

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Most of your employees have all the ingredients for greatness inside them already. They simply need you to motivate them. Learn how today!

Why Startups Fail
Why Startups Fail

Author: Tom Eisenmann

Publisher: Currency

Published: 2021-03-30

Total Pages: 370

ISBN-13: 0593137027

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If you want your startup to succeed, you need to understand why startups fail. “Whether you’re a first-time founder or looking to bring innovation into a corporate environment, Why Startups Fail is essential reading.”—Eric Ries, founder and CEO, LTSE, and New York Times bestselling author of The Lean Startup and The Startup Way Why do startups fail? That question caught Harvard Business School professor Tom Eisenmann by surprise when he realized he couldn’t answer it. So he launched a multiyear research project to find out. In Why Startups Fail, Eisenmann reveals his findings: six distinct patterns that account for the vast majority of startup failures. • Bad Bedfellows. Startup success is thought to rest largely on the founder’s talents and instincts. But the wrong team, investors, or partners can sink a venture just as quickly. • False Starts. In following the oft-cited advice to “fail fast” and to “launch before you’re ready,” founders risk wasting time and capital on the wrong solutions. • False Promises. Success with early adopters can be misleading and give founders unwarranted confidence to expand. • Speed Traps. Despite the pressure to “get big fast,” hypergrowth can spell disaster for even the most promising ventures. • Help Wanted. Rapidly scaling startups need lots of capital and talent, but they can make mistakes that leave them suddenly in short supply of both. • Cascading Miracles. Silicon Valley exhorts entrepreneurs to dream big. But the bigger the vision, the more things that can go wrong. Drawing on fascinating stories of ventures that failed to fulfill their early promise—from a home-furnishings retailer to a concierge dog-walking service, from a dating app to the inventor of a sophisticated social robot, from a fashion brand to a startup deploying a vast network of charging stations for electric vehicles—Eisenmann offers frameworks for detecting when a venture is vulnerable to these patterns, along with a wealth of strategies and tactics for avoiding them. A must-read for founders at any stage of their entrepreneurial journey, Why Startups Fail is not merely a guide to preventing failure but also a roadmap charting the path to startup success.

How They Started
How They Started

Author: David Lester

Publisher: Crimson Publishing

Published: 2007-06-01

Total Pages: 215

ISBN-13: 1780590008

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Lots of us have ideas we think would make great businesses. Most of us never do anything with those ideas. But for those that do, a world of opportunity awaits them. This book is about 30 people who acted on their idea, made the first steps to start their business and subsequently went on to turn it into a global brand. From Innocent to Cobra to Dreams to Dysone, we reveal how some of the UK's biggest businesses got of the ground, and those very first steps taken by their founders.

What's Good for Business
What's Good for Business

Author: Kim Phillips-Fein

Publisher: Oxford University Press

Published: 2012-04-12

Total Pages: 279

ISBN-13: 0199912823

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This volume showcases the most exciting new voices in the fields of business and political history. While the media frequently warns of the newfound power of business in the world of politics, the authors in this book demonstrate that business has mobilized to shape public policy and government institutions, as well as electoral outcomes, for decades. Rather than assuming that business influence is inevitable, the chapters explore the complex evolution of this relationship in a wide range of different arenas--from attempts to create a corporate-friendly tax policy and regulations that would work in the interests of particular industries, to local boosterism as a weapon against New Deal liberalism, to the nexus between evangelical Christianity and the oil industry, to the frustrations that business people felt in struggles with public interest groups. The history that emerges show business actors organizing themselves to affect government in myriad ways, sometimes successfully but other times with outcomes far different than they hoped for. The result in an image of American politics that is more complex and contested than it is often thought to be. The essays represent a new trend in scholarship on political economy, one that seeks to break down the barriers that once separated old subfields to offer a vision of the economy as shaped by politics and political life influenced by economic relationships.

Good Company
Good Company

Author: Laurie Bassi

Publisher: Berrett-Koehler Publishers

Published: 2011-09-06

Total Pages: 295

ISBN-13: 1609940636

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Laurie Bassi and her coauthors show that despite the dispiriting headlines, we are entering a more hopeful economic age. The authors call it the “Worthiness Era.” And in it, the good guys are poised to win. Good Company explains how this new era results from a convergence of forces, ranging from the explosion of online information sharing to the emergence of the ethical consumer and the arrival of civic-minded Millennials. Across the globe, people are choosing the companies in their lives in the same way they choose the guests they invite into their homes. They are demanding that companies be “good company.” Proof is in the numbers. The authors created the Good Company Index to take a systematic look at Fortune 100 companies’ records as employers, sellers, and stewards of society and the planet. The results were clear: worthiness pays off. Companies in the same industry with higher scores on the index—that is, companies that have behaved better—outperformed their peers in the stock market. And this is not some academic exercise: the authors have used principles of the index at their own investment firm to deliver market-beating results. Using a host of real-world examples, Bassi and company explain each aspect of corporate worthiness and describe how you can assess other companies with which you do business as a consumer, investor, or employee. This detailed guide will help you determine who the good guys are—those companies that are worthy of your time, your loyalty, and your money.

Testing Business Ideas
Testing Business Ideas

Author: David J. Bland

Publisher: John Wiley & Sons

Published: 2019-11-06

Total Pages: 365

ISBN-13: 1119551420

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A practical guide to effective business model testing 7 out of 10 new products fail to deliver on expectations. Testing Business Ideas aims to reverse that statistic. In the tradition of Alex Osterwalder’s global bestseller Business Model Generation, this practical guide contains a library of hands-on techniques for rapidly testing new business ideas. Testing Business Ideas explains how systematically testing business ideas dramatically reduces the risk and increases the likelihood of success for any new venture or business project. It builds on the internationally popular Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas by integrating Assumptions Mapping and other powerful lean startup-style experiments. Testing Business Ideas uses an engaging 4-color format to: Increase the success of any venture and decrease the risk of wasting time, money, and resources on bad ideas Close the knowledge gap between strategy and experimentation/validation Identify and test your key business assumptions with the Business Model Canvas and Value Proposition Canvas A definitive field guide to business model testing, this book features practical tips for making major decisions that are not based on intuition and guesses. Testing Business Ideas shows leaders how to encourage an experimentation mindset within their organization and make experimentation a continuous, repeatable process.

Love is Just Damn Good Business: Do What You Love in the Service of People Who Love What You Do
Love is Just Damn Good Business: Do What You Love in the Service of People Who Love What You Do

Author: Steve Farber

Publisher: McGraw Hill Professional

Published: 2019-09-06

Total Pages: 225

ISBN-13: 1260441237

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From the bestselling author of The Radical Leap and Greater Than Yourself comes the first book to directly address love as a hard-core business principle that generates measurable results It’s time to toss aside the touchy-feely notions of love in business and acknowledge the real power that it holds. Love is not only appropriate in the context of business, it’s the foundation of great leadership. To put it bluntly: love is just damn good business. That’s the simple but profound truth that leadership consultant Steve Farber has discovered in his extensive work with Fortune 100 companies and other successful businesses. His game-changing approach to love as a practical business strategy will help you to: • Identify your passions—and share them with others • Create a culture of love at work—and spark innovation, productivity, and joy • Serve your customers, so they love how you treat them—and have them coming back for more • Invest time in making personal connections—that are mutually rewarding • Focus on serving the needs of others—they’re going to love it • Do what you love—and make it your business, so others love it, too The proven principles you’ll find in this book will help you lay the groundwork for a thriving, competitive enterprise. When love is part of your organization’s framework and operationalized in its culture, employees and customers feel genuinely valued. Employees who are passionate about the work that they do are more loyal, innovative, creative, and inspired, and that translates to great customer experience. They don’t serve others out of obligation, but because of a genuine desire to improve people’s lives. And when customers reciprocate by loving your products, your services, and your people, that’s when something great happens. That’s when you get loyalty. That’s when you get raving fans. It’s a refreshingly human way of doing business. In addition to Farber’s field-tested strategies, you’ll find inspiring case studies from a wide range of industries and leaders, revealing self-assessment quizzes, and practical pointers on how to build a corporate culture based on love, the ultimate competitive advantage. At the end of the day, it’s just damn good business.