A finely crafted, tightly defined, highly detailed business plan seems like a perfectly rational tool for getting your entrepreneurial ideas off the ground. Schramm, an economist, Syracuse University professor and former president of the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation — a non-profit that encourages entrepreneurship — says that crafting a business plan is one of the biggest misconceptions about how to start a company on the right footing.
His new book, , says the true blueprint for success requires innovative ideas, real-world experience and keen judgment.
But the reality is, the vast majority of people who start businesses are middle-career people who have been surprised by the fact that they actually had an idea, and their idea was good enough to build a business around.
Another thing wrong with how we write about entrepreneurship, how it’s taught, is that somehow people set out to be entrepreneurs as if they set out to be a dentist or an accountant.
[email protected]: Would you say that passion and determination are two of the great qualities that a lot of entrepreneurs have? Students in college are told to follow your passion and start a company.
But a lot of times, the passion doesn’t make any sense.
So, I largely view the creation of a business plan as something of a waste of time.
The third problem is that it seems to make starting a business somewhat like a cookbook.
I said, “Holy smokes, if I want to really make this work and actually change the world, I can’t do it by writing an academic paper.
I have to start a business.” [email protected]: How should we teach our kids about entrepreneurship? Because if you look empirically at where entrepreneurs come from, if they have formal training, it’s not in entrepreneurship.
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