Business Plan: In or Out? A Holistic View of the Combination of Planning and Learning Processes when Evaluating Business Opportunities

Entrepreneurship is an important driver of innovation that is a critical factor to boost the competitiveness of modern economies. However, the rate of failure of start-ups tends to be quite significant. This chapter offers a new understanding of entrepreneurship inasmuch as a particular attention is given to different insights on the business plan in the creation of start-ups. In this context, we propose a broader understanding of the business plan integrating it in a holistic understanding of the business planning process. This investigation project results from the merits associated with the concomitant approach that combines planning and learning when creating new businesses. We support the adoption of this approach by developing a scheme that combines two processes that seem to be opposite. One focuses on the business planning and the other on the information collected from customers and other stakeholders. This scheme is likely to guide entrepreneurs and managers when they choose the concomitant approach that combines planning and learning over the other approaches previously studied. Furthermore, we also establish the foundation for future scientific research to develop a framework that can be used to help decrease the number of new businesses that do not survive in the market.