Rate this book

Getting To Plan B: Breaking Through To A Better Business Model (2009)

by John W. Mullins(Favorite Author)

3.85 of 5 Votes: 4

ISBN

1422152693 (ISBN13: 9781422152690)

languge

English

genre

Historical Fiction

publisher

Harvard Business School Press

review 1: Good book with lots of examples. You can 90% by reading the first couple chapters and skimming the rest.Notes:Your First Plan Probably Will Not WorkThe research on new products success and failure indicates that it takes fifty-eight new products ideas to deliver a single successful new product.Getting to Plan B is about how to avoid getting stuck in a rut, missing real opportunities, or worse, closing your doors.Running out of cash isn’t a cause; it’s a symptom or a signal that the company’s business model didn’t work.Should outline the five elements in a business model, to determine the economic viability and whether the business is likely to run out of cash or not.The best ideas are those that solve somebody’s pain, some customer problem you’ve identified for... more which your solution might work.Plans are useless but planning is indispensable.Systematically Develop Business PlansAnalogsPredecessor companies that are worth mimicking in some way. They do not have to be in the same industry. For example, two analog companies for the iPod/iTunes would be sony and napster. Sony proved that people would be willing to use personal music players with headphones and napster proved that people were willing to download music.AntilogsPredecessor companies which you explicitly choose to do something different. These companies were probably not successful. For example, the antilog companies for the iTunes were the for-pay music subscription services that existed at the time. Instead of paying a subscription to access a library the the service provider controlled, Apple allowed consumers to purchase a single song and download it to their computers.Leaps of FaithBeliefs you hold about the answer to questions raised by your business plan despite having no real evidence that these beliefs are actually true. These must be tested for validity as quickly and cheaply as possible. Apple's leap of faith was that music listeners would actually pay for their music.DashboardsThe process of systematically recording your leaps of faith, the hypotheses that grow out of them, and the results of those hypothesis tests. This allows you a very focused way to see if your business plan is working.Mix and MatchTo create a successful business plan, mix and match analogs and antilogs. Form leaps of faith and then test them systematically using dashboards.
review 2: Ordering this book was a no-brainer.Every (would be) entrepreneur who has enjoyed reading Randy's ,Goodbye Carrier, Hello Success` knows Randy`s wisdom for entrepreneurs. It'd call him the ,Zen Entrepreneur` for his enlightement and razor sharp thinking (for a taste, check out Youtube ,the biggest successes are often bred from failures).The book is about a rarely covered topic: Getting to plan B (if necessary to Z). If the founders of Google, PayPal or Starbucks had stuck to their original plan, we might have never heard of them. PayPal's plan A didn't work. Neither did B, C, D, E nor F. Plan G stroke gold.This is not a book about ,business planning`. It's a book about, in a sense, ,business discovering`. Getting to Plan B is a structured process of discovering, over time, a fluid pattern among the five business model* elements that, working together, will make the economics work (provided the business model is sound), so you don't run out of money along the way.*revenue model, gross margin model, operating model, working capital model & investment model.Randy & John, thank you very much for sharing your knowledge & wisdom with us. less

Download links for: Getting to Plan B: Breaking Through to a Better Business Model

Advertising