For decades, write a Business Plan It was almost a mandatory ritual for anyone who wanted to undertake.
Considered a sign of professionalism, maturity and preparation, it was taught in business schools, it was required by banks, investors and competitions, and was seen as a synonym for serious planning.
Already in 2005, Steve Blank, father of modern entrepreneurship sentenced: “Business plans do not survive the first contact with the client”
Incredibly, many of these organizations are still outdated.
The document, typically 20 to 50 pages, included an exhaustive analysis of the market, strategic definitions, detailed organizational structures, and – especially – financial projections for three or five years.
In its logic, the business plan starts from the premise that the environment is, at least to some extent, predictable: If it is analyzed with sufficient depth, if it is modeled rigorously, if it “thinks well”, you can anticipate market behavior and build a solid route towards success. This logic made sense in an industrial context, where the innovation cycles were slow, access to data was limited and the test and error costs were very high.
In a context of lower information, with less competitors and key decision -making and greater entry barriers, the photo reached. Today we need iterative and dynamic planning (the video). Flexible strategy Planning
But the problem is not the effort to think strategically. On the contrary!
The problem is that Traditional business plan format is rigid, expensive in time and effort (although now Chatgpt puts it with a prompt)static and based on non -validated assumptions.
And that, in a world like the current one, can be a critical disadvantage.
The business plan is not simply a set of ideas: it is a linear, formal, closed document. It is made once, on many occasions with months of work, and rarely is updated in depth.
In general, it applies to its purpose: to get investment, a loan, encourage us to start, expose experts, and then end up in a drawer.
Its own nature (structured, logical, sequential) promotes the illusion that once written, it becomes a road map. But this structure is precisely what makes it Little adaptable.
It’s like drawing a map without having stepped on the ground. When reality is stepped on, that map becomes quickly obsolete.
Steve Blank explained it with forcefulness: “No business plan survives the first contact with the client”. This phrase, inspired by Mike Tyson’s famous appointment (“Everyone has a plan until they receive the first blow”), reflects a common experience: entrepreneurs who spend months writing a perfect plan, just to discover that the market does not respond as expected. Javier Megías summarizes it as “A fiction exercise made on the desk”. Steve Blank calls the “riddle” hypotheses.
A serious defect of the classic plan is to present hypothesis as if they were made. Megías warns against the “capital sin” of giving certain unusual statements. Nassim taleb, from risk epistemology, would say that we are facing a case of “Illusion of knowledge”. This leads to overestimate the ability to predict, ignoring the complexity and non -linearity of the environment.
Henry Mintzberg already criticized him in the 90s: “The strategy is not written in a plan, emerges from interaction with reality”. In changing markets, that rigidity not only does not help, but can drag the entrepreneur to insist on a wrong direction.
The process of writing a detailed plan can become an excuse for not acting. Perfectionism, the search for certainty, and the fear of uncertainty push many entrepreneurs to Overplanify rather go to validate.
Many give up even before, when they understand that they must write a document.
Be careful with those advice! The one who gives them does not read or prepares a long time ago.
Taleb warns: What really changes the game is not what we plan, but the unexpected.
The “black swans” (highly unlikely events, but with great impact) cannot be anticipated in any Excel. And in a volatile world, the shocks multiply. Extensive plans generate a false control sensation that can be dangerous.
Besides, Yes we can prepare and position ourselves in an antifragile way. Combining validated and resilient models (client financed, with fixed costs and reduced assets) with continuous exploration and ambitious learning organizations.
Steve Blank expressed him in a revolutionary way: A startup is not a small version of a large company.
It is not executing a proven model, but in active search of that model.
This completely changes the rules of the game. Trying to direct this search with a fixed plan is like wanting to explore a new continent with the map of another.
Emphasize early validation with the client. “Outside the building” is left to confirm (or refute) each critical assumption. The process is structured in four phases: discovery, validation, creation of customers and company construction.
Introduces concepts such as Viable minimum product (MVP) and the cycle Build – Measure – Learn. Instead of building the perfect product, a minimum functional version is launched to test real hypotheses and adjust rapidly. It is the combination of customer development and agility.
A visual canvas that replaces the plan as a main tool. Each block represents a hypothesis that can and should adjust with evidence of the market. Steve Blank adopted it and popularized it in replacement of the classical plan.
In SCALABL® we incorporate the operating model and 6 rules that validate that the models are resilient and funded by customers to the model.
Extraordinary in his vision that it is not the plan to which it works but the Z. and in customer financing models. Reference of entrepreneurship in London Business School, criticizes the VC model and explains how to collect investment is not the only way.
MIT referent, proposes a 24 steps model to launch ventures, leaving the business plan, and starting from iterative planning.
Principles and values that arise in manufacturing (Toyota), then IT (agile manifesto) and then derive in business with the contribution of Eric Ries. Conceptually include methodologies, tools (eg scrum, kanban) mentioned in this section.
All aligned to leave the long -term plan and carry out continuous and iterative planning with the actors in the center and starting from their insights.
He studied how expert entrepreneurs think. They do not start from a fixed objective, but what they have at hand, and advance making small assumable bets. Its logic is flexible, adaptive, antifragile. They do not seek to predict, but build with what they control.
It proposes that new businesses should not be planned as extensions of the past, but as a hypothesis to be discovered. Budget in stages is released, as critical assumptions are validated. It is an incremental vision based on empirical learning.
Disruptive innovation, which today multiplies and increases its speed, almost never fits a traditional plan. The plans ignore this type of uncertainty.
In The Innovator’s Dilemmaa classic, makes it clear: Successful models emerge from non -linear processes.
In Crossing the chasmshows that the transition from the early market to the mainstream is neither predictable nor linear. Therefore, a plan that assumes progressive adoption is often a mirage.
There is much to learn. “Entrepreneur who does not read is at a tremendous disadvantage,” I insist since 2015.
In Antifragile, The Black Swan and FoED by Randomnessseverely criticizes the illusion of control.
Extensive plans create false security and make us fragile at the unexpected.
The true entrepreneur needs structures that benefit from volatility and unpredictable, not collapse before him.
It is not only the business plan, the organizations that we know as companies are also transforming. They no longer respond to the needs for which they were created.
Not for now. As I explain in the beginning, even sectors that should be referents such as the Academy and the banks have not understood. Governments continue to do Copy Paste. And companies fail to abandon the dynamics of 5 -year plans (every year). They need help.
In certain specific contexts, an adapted version of the plan can make sense:
- For experienced entrepreneurs who have already validated their model and seek institutional or banking financing.
- In very regulated sectors or with formal requirements (for example, health, public education, energy).
- As a synthesis tool after validation, to present external stakeholders. The Pitch Deck is used a lot, a reduced version more oriented by the validated business model.
- In established companies, as a short -term operational planning instrument (1 year or less), and with periodic review (increasingly periodic)
My recommendation? Use modern methodologies and abandon the business plan.
If we need it for any of the previous cases (it has happened to me, for example, when opening my company in Hong Kong and other markets), resting in Chatgpt or Gemini feeding it with the option of Extensive or Deep Research Research and the validated inputs of our companies.
The fundamental thing is to remember that:
The plan must be a LIVE DOCUMENTiterative, built on real data, market learning and not on assumptions or illusions.
Planning remains crucial.
But it is no longer about writing prophecies. Nor formulate plans and execute based on riddles. Need less fiction and more contact with reality
Today’s plan is updated every day, with active listening and continuous experimentation, always with business actors in the center.
We do not rule out strategic thinking, quite the opposite. We simply modernize the tools with which we carry it out.
Because continuous learning is the fuel of the business of our era.
No longer money, or investment.
