Variable | Step 1 | Step 2 |
---|---|---|
Constant | 4.43** | 4.18** |
Firm Age | 0.005 | −0.002 |
Ent XP | 0.52* | 0.59* |
Age | −0.02** | −0.02+ |
Education | 0.08 | 0.04 |
Case sample | −0.61* | −0.69* |
High Tech Firm | −0.10 | −0.16 |
0.09+ | ||
Write business plan | ||
Secondary data | −0.02 | |
Business plan feedback | −0.02 | |
Business plan funding | −0.05 | |
0.09+ | ||
Interview | ||
Prototype | −0.02 | |
Show prototype | 0.04 | |
Experiment | −0.02 | |
Preorders | 0.15* | |
Pivot | 0.06 | |
0.19 | 0.30 | |
Adjusted | 0.15 | 0.19 |
change | 0.19 | 0.10 |
Business planning | Lean startup | ||
---|---|---|---|
Supported? | Supported? | ||
: Write Business Plan | Yes | : Interviewed Customers | Yes |
: Secondary Data | No | : Created a Prototype | No |
: Feedback on Business Plan | No | : Showed a Prototype | No |
: Funding from Business Plan | No | : Experiment | No |
: Preorders | Yes | ||
: Pivoted | No |
Summary regression results for the growth DV
Variable | Business plan | Lean startup |
---|---|---|
Constant | 2.18 | 2.10 |
Firm Age | 0.03 | −0.01 |
Ent XP | 1.13 | 1.24 |
Age | −0.04** | −0.05* |
Education | 0.18 | 0.16 |
Case sample | 0.65 | 0.25 |
High Tech Firm | −0.61 | −0.48 |
0.30* | ||
Write business plan | ||
Secondary data | −0.17 | |
Business plan feedback | 0.01 | |
Business plan funding | 0.19 | 0.25 |
Interview | ||
Prototype | −0.11 | |
Show prototype | 0.14 | |
Experiment | −0.09 | |
Preorders | 0.89* | |
Pivot | 0.34* | |
0.39* | 0.51* |
Business planning | Lean startup | ||
---|---|---|---|
Hypothesis 1 | Supported? | Hypothesis 2 | Supported? |
: Write Business Plan | Yes | : Interviewed Customers | Yes |
: Secondary Data | No | : Created a Prototype | No |
: Feedback on Business Plan | No | : Showed a Prototype | No |
: Funding from Business Plan | No | : Experiment | No |
: Preorders | Yes | ||
: Pivoted | Yes |
We do not believe that business planning exists as a latent construct necessarily comprised of these activities, but rather each of these activities are potential components of the concept referred to as “business planning” in prior research.
Similar to business planning activities, we believe that lean startup is not a latent construct but rather these activities in some combination is what is meant when practitioners and scholars refer to lean startup. As such we test each of the activities individually rather than as a construct.
Following the extant guidelines on regression assumptions ( Osborne and Waters, 2002 ), we tested our model to ensure the regression assumptions were met. First, to check if our error terms ( Flatt and Jacobs, 2019 ) are normally distributed, the P - P plot suggests normality as the plot is largely linear. Second, to check for a linear relationship between the independent and dependent variable, our residual plot showed a linear relationship. Third, as our variables were not latent, there is no concern for measurement error for this approach. However, we did follow best practices suggested by Flatt and Jacobs (2019) and tested the Durbin–Watson statistic. Our value for this measure is 1.5 and their guidelines are that this statistic should be close to 2. Values between 1.2 and 1.6 represent only a minor violation of the statistical independence of error terms. Finally, to address the assumption of homoscedasticity, inspection of our standardized residuals showed our residuals scattered around the 0 (horizontal line). Therefore, for our dependent variable of success, we can feel comfortable our data meets the assumptions of linear regression.
As this dependent variable was analyzed using logistic regression, we analyzed our data following best practices from Garson (2012) . First, our dependent variable is dichotomous. Second our scatterplot showed no outliers in our data. Third, the correlation table showed no evidence for multicollinearity as no correlations were above 0.9 ( Tabachnick et al. , 2007 ). Hence, we feel our data meets the assumptions for logistic regression.
[Business Background]
Started (or am starting it) myself
When you first started pursuing the business, how many people were on the founding team (including yourself)?
High Tech Startup (External/Venture funded)
Steady Growth Business (Internally/Self-funded)
Lifestyle Business
Business Idea
Decision to Start a Business
Occurred Together
Month (1–12)
Year (YYYY)
[Lean Start Up, Business Planning Practices]
Interviewed potential customers
Created a prototype
Showed a prototype to potential customers for feedback
Conducted an experiment to better understand some portion of your business
Wrote a business plan
Accepted money for pre-orders
Used customer feedback to alter the direction of your business ("pivoted")
Gathered secondary data on industry statistics or trends
Shared your business plan with people outside the company for feedback
Shared your business plan with people outside the company for funding
[Demographics]
How old are you? 0.5
Prefer not to answer
Black or African American
American Indian or Alaska Native
Native Hawaiian or Pacific Islander
Living with a partner
Never married
Up to 8th grade
Some High School
High School Diploma
Some College
Associate's Degree
Bachelor's Degree
Some Graduate School
Master's Degree
More than 1
[Success Criteria]
My business is a success
Increased Annual Revenue
Increased Annual Customers
Increased Number of Employees
Thank you for completing the survey!
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A portion of this research was funded by the Downing Scholars research grant at Xavier University.
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The nation's highest court said millions of student-loan borrowers still can't get lower monthly payments through a key relief program.
On Wednesday, the Supreme Court said it would not lift a block on key provisions in President Joe Biden's SAVE income-driven repayment plan . The plan is intended to give 8 million enrolled borrowers lower payments and a shorter timeline for debt relief.
The Supreme Court, in a one-paragraph order , said it would not override a ruling from the 8th Circuit Court of Appeals that blocked the plan in its entirety on July 18 in response to a lawsuit led by Missouri's attorney general, pending a final court decision. The 8th Circuit formally placed a preliminary injunction on the plan in early August.
The Education Department did not immediately respond to a request for comment from Business Insider on the implications of this ruling.
However, Solicitor General Elizabeth Prelogar wrote in a response to the Supreme Court that blocking the SAVE plan could come with significant costs to borrowers. The Education Department would be forced to recalculate millions of borrowers' payments, requiring a forbearance period during which interest would not accrue. Borrowers would not make any progress toward forgiveness through Public Service Loan Forgiveness or income-driven repayment plans.
The Education Department has already placed SAVE borrowers on forbearance following the 8th Circuit's decision, but at the time, it was unclear how long the forbearance would last. The back-and-forth court rulings have promoted confusion among many borrowers who are struggling to plan for their futures.
"I'm going to have to rebudget all over again," Alan Pedrick, a 41-year-old SAVE borrower, previously told BI . "And this is probably the most difficult time of my life as far as finances go with the cost of housing, the cost of vehicles, gas, food has shot up and now they want to go back and make us start repaying. It's kind of depressing, really."
6 min. read
Updated February 9, 2024
During a business crisis, change comes at you fast. Meaning that good business planning is crucial to the survival and success of your business. However, even when you’re not navigating through a crisis, it’s easy to make mistakes that can prove to be costly for your business.
Some common mistakes are classics. Others are reflections of the growing need for planning as steering and management tools. But they are all common pitfalls to avoid. Do your planning right and it’s a powerful tool for quick decisions, rapid adjustment, and optimizing management.
So, what are the most common mistakes when writing a business plan ?
Too many businesses make business plans only when they have no choice in the matter. Unless a bank or investors want a plan, there is no plan.
Don’t wait to write your plan until you think you’ll have enough time. “I can’t plan. I’m too busy getting things done,” business people say. The busier you are, the more you need to plan. If you are always putting out fires, you should build firebreaks or a sprinkler system. You can lose the whole forest for paying too much attention to the individual burning trees.
You can actually put together a Lean Plan in less than 30 minutes . Here’s a free downloadable Lean Plan Template to help.
Now more than ever, as we deal with the crisis of 2020 and 2021, stop thinking of the business plan as just a plan. That conceptual mistake blocks you from the enormous benefits of planning as a process, with regular review and revision .
Things change overnight. Assumptions disappear into the wind. Your business planning is where you keep track of all of the connections between tasks, spending, goals, changing assumptions, and changing markets.
A good business plan is never finished. When your plan is done, your company is done. Do a lean plan and keep it fresh.
Most people think in terms of profits instead of cash . When you imagine a new business, you think of what it would cost to make the product, what you could sell it for, and what the profits per unit might be.
We are trained to think of business as sales minus costs and expenses, which equals profits. Unfortunately, we don’t spend the profits in a business. We spend cash.
Understanding cash flow is critical. If you have only one table in your business plan, make it the cash flow table. Here’s a free cash flow template to help you get started.
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Don’t overestimate the importance of the idea. You don’t need a great idea to start a business — you need time, money, perseverance, and common sense.
Few successful businesses are based entirely on new ideas. A new idea is harder to execute than an existing one because people don’t understand a new idea and they are often unsure if it will work.
Plans don’t sell new business ideas to investors. Plans just summarize business prospects and achievements. Investors invest in people, and their businesses, not ideas. Investors buy into a business, with milestones met and traction and validation ; not just ideas.
The plan, though necessary, is only a way to present information. So make sure you’re ready to wow your prospective investors with your knowledge and leadership skills. Don’t expect your business idea — or the business plan you explain it in — to do the work for you.
Here’s our idea validation checklist — it can help you think through whether your idea is viable before you spend a lot of time and money on it.
Doing a business plan isn’t as hard as you might think. You don’t have to write a doctoral thesis or a novel. As we said earlier, the simplest Lean Plan is just a few pages of bullet-point lists, tables, and essential projections.
There are good books , many advisors among the Small Business Development Centers (SBDCs), and through the SCORE business mentoring program, business schools, and there is software available to help you (such as LivePlan ).
Don’t sweat the cosmetics. Focus on the content. What matters is what you plan, not how you write about it.
Leave out the vague and meaningless babble of business phrases (such as “being the best”) because they are simply hype.
Remember that the objective of a plan is its results, and for results, you need tracking and follow-up . You need specific dates, management responsibilities, budgets, and milestones. Then you can follow up. No matter how well thought out or brilliantly presented, it means nothing unless it produces results. This article on how milestones make your business plan real and actionable will help.
Not every business plan needs to be the same. In fact not every plan should be the same. To find success, you need to tailor your plan to its real business purpose.
Business plans can be different things: they are sometimes just sales documents to explain a new business. They can also be flexible Lean Plans, detailed action plans, financial plans , marketing plans , and even personnel plans. They can be used to start a business , or just run a business better.
Develop the plan that best suits your business goals and don’t let the planning process get the best of you.
Remember, strategy equals focus . If you split your priorities you split your focus and will only have difficulties making any progress.
Starting with a priority list of three to four items is the focus. A priority list with 20 items is certainly not strategic, and rarely if ever effective. The more items on the list, the less the importance of each.
Sales grow slowly at first, but then shoot up boldly with huge growth rates, as soon as “something” happens. The only issue is if that’s your sole projection, you’ll soon find yourself in trouble.
It’s best to have projections that are conservative so you can defend them. When in doubt, be less optimistic. In fact, it may make sense to have multiple forecasts operating — one that acts conservatively, one that’s more optimistic, and another that reflects your actual performance.
If you’re unsure of where to start, here’s how we suggest you create your sales forecast .
We’ve seen it again in 2020 — planning works best as a process. In order to navigate volatile environments a lean plan, regular reviews, and revisions as needed are necessary. It’s not about having the document, the business plan, that isn’t the goal. It’s about a system of planning that works like driving with a GPS.
You have the long-term strategy and goals as the desired destination. You have the major milestones and metrics as the recommended route. And you have regular progress reviews as the equivalent of real-time traffic and weather information.
Steering is a matter of frequent course corrections. Planning does that for you. If you’re not paying attention, and not adjusting to external factors, your plan is worthless.
Contrary to popular belief, there is no virtue in sticking to a plan, just for the sake of sticking to a plan. There are plenty of cases where your initial plan is ill-informed, missing steps, or just ineffective.
Having a plan doesn’t mean you cut your options or reduce flexibility. Having a plan means you have a dashboard tool to show the connections and dependencies. It’s about being able to make the right changes fast. It is more flexible, not less.
Tim Berry is the founder and chairman of Palo Alto Software , a co-founder of Borland International, and a recognized expert in business planning. He has an MBA from Stanford and degrees with honors from the University of Oregon and the University of Notre Dame. Today, Tim dedicates most of his time to blogging, teaching and evangelizing for business planning.
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This combination photo shows Republican presidential nominee former President Donald Trump at an event, Aug. 15, 2024, in Bedminster, N.J., left, and Democratic presidential nominee Vice President Kamala Harris at a campaign event in Raleigh, N.C., Aug. 16, 2024. (AP Photo)
WASHINGTON (AP) — The Biden administration offered federal resources to Donald Trump and Kamala Harris for presidential transition planning for the first time Tuesday, with experts suggesting both are behind in preparing for their potential administrations.
While transitions kick into high gear after Election Day , when a president-elect must begin selecting and vetting about 4,000 federal political appointees, success depends on the infrastructure built during the pre-election period, including identifying agency review teams and beginning the background check process for national security staff.
Both Vice President Harris and former President Trump started the process this month, months later than prior transitions. Harris was elevated to the top of the Democratic ticket just five weeks ago after President Joe Biden dropped his reelection bid , and she had to first redirect his political operation before laying the groundwork for the transition. It is not clear why Trump, who sewed up the nomination months ago, did not start sooner.
Max Stier, the president and CEO of the Partnership for Public Service, said planning to take office in the modern era has tended to begin in the late spring.
“It is possible to try and catch up, but the reality is that both candidates have a lot to do,” he said.
Tuesday is the congressionally mandated date for the General Services Administration to make space available for Trump and Harris, three business days after the second nominating convention. The office space is just blocks from the White House, with even more federal resources set to flow to the winner after Election Day. But nominees usually start the initial planning for their potential administrations soon after they lock up the nomination, even before they begin receiving federal support.
Harris, if she wins, may choose to keep some political appointees from the Biden administration — potentially helping her avoid messy confirmation fights if Republicans take control of the Senate. But significant change is inevitable, as she will want to put her own stamp on government. And many long-serving Biden administration officials are likely seeking to exit for other opportunities regardless of the outcome in November.
Trump, meanwhile, is likely to try to avoid mistakes of his 2016 transition, when he shelved months of planning by a group led by former New Jersey Gov. Chris Christie. That left Trump and his team, many of whom had never served in government, unprepared after Election Day.
Stier said Trump’s 2016 effort set a low bar for transition efforts in the modern era, followed by George H.W. Bush’s 1988 effort as the then-vice president prepared to take over from President Ronald Reagan. He said there can be a special challenge in negotiating a same-party handoff, including misplaced expectations about continuity between presidents and the risk of hubris in those who’ve served in government recently assuming more significant roles.
Trump formally stood up his transition team earlier this month to be led by former Small Business Administrator Linda McMahon and billionaire Howard Lutnick.
Harris has asked Yohannes Abraham, the ambassador to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and the executive director of the Biden-Harris 2020 transition, to lead her planning for the White House.
What to know about the 2024 Election
Abraham is set to leave his position in the coming days to assume the role. Covington & Burling, LLP, which assisted Harris in vetting her vice presidential pick, will provide legal counsel to the transition organization.
According to a person familiar with the planning, Harris’ transition team won’t make any personnel decisions before the election, nor will it develop policy — functions that will remain with Harris’ campaign and official office.
Trump’s team, meanwhile, has not committed to accepting the federal support. Trump told the Daily Mail last week that he would decline access to traditional pre-Election Day intelligence briefings, saying he was worried about being accused of leaking classified information.
“We look forward to this notification and will reply when we have evaluated what is being offered, said Brian Hughes, a senior adviser to the Trump campaign.
Trump has also brought former Democratic Rep. Tulsi Gabbard and independent presidential candidate Robert F. Kennedy Jr. onto his transition team, Hughes confirmed Tuesday.
GSA is required by law to make available federal office space, IT support and other resources to transition teams starting Tuesday, but only once it has entered into memoranda of understanding with representatives for each nominee, which Congress requires the agency to do “to the maximum extent practicable,” by Sept. 1. A GSA spokesperson confirmed that the agency had made its offer to the two candidates Tuesday.
“Both teams will really want to have the infrastructure set up behind the scenes that allows them to conduct meetings with federal agencies and manage a resume bank, and have an organized process for all of the personnel and policy planning confronting them should they win the election,” said Valerie Smith Boyd, director of the Partnership for Public Service’s Center for Presidential Transition.
Meanwhile, the Biden administration has been making plans to support the transition for months in line with its obligation under the Presidential Transition Act.
A federal transition coordinating council, which includes representatives across the government and is chaired by Biden’s chief of staff Jeff Zients, is holding regular meetings to prepare to hand off control on Jan. 20, 2025, and agencies are preparing detailed briefing memos on their activities to share with the eventual winner’s team.
Teams of federal agents and government workers from the FBI and intelligence community — including some hired back from retirement — are at the ready to vet hundreds of potential transition staff and administration appointees.
Access to current executive branch employees, facilities, and documents require the transition teams to agree to an ethics plan, and transition teams must disclose donors and limit contributions to $5,000 as a condition of receiving government funds.
Associated Press writer Michelle Price in New York contributed to this report.
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Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has floated the idea of a 10 percent tariff on all U.S. imports, a plan that economists say could badly damage trade.
By Patricia Cohen
Former President Donald J. Trump blames the global trading system for inflicting a long list of ills on the American economy including lost jobs, closed foreign markets and an overvalued dollar.
The remedy, he insists, is simple: tariffs. Mr. Trump, the Republican nominee for president, has repeatedly said he would raise tariffs if elected. China, a geopolitical and economic rival, would face an additional 50 or 60 percent tariff on its exports to the United States. He has also floated the idea of a 10 to 20 percent surcharge on exports from the rest of the world.
Although smaller than the percentage proposed for Chinese exports, an across-the-board tariff has the potential to deliver a much more devastating jolt to world trade, many economists warn.
Such a surcharge would not distinguish between rivals and allies, critical necessities and nonessentials, ailing industries and superstars, or countries adhering to trade treaties and those violating them. (Democrats have also embraced tariffs as a policy tool , but Vice President Kamala Harris, the Democratic presidential nominee, has criticized Mr. Trump’s universal approach as inflationary.)
Here is what you need to know about the idea of a universal tariff on all imports.
Mr. Trump’s broad-brush tariffs frequently evoke comparisons with the destructive global trade war that the United States helped to initiate in the 1930s with the Smoot-Hawley tariffs passed by Congress. The Senate Historical Office has called that law “among the most catastrophic acts in congressional history.”
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Donald J. Trump, the Republican presidential nominee, has floated the idea of a 10 percent tariff on all U.S. imports, a plan that economists say could badly damage trade. By Patricia Cohen Former ...