Catch-22: The Dilemma…

The experts: Academics, bankers and consultants – recommend the traditional business plan as the best starting point for business development.
Those who succeed: Say the traditional business plan’s myriad details overwhelming, much too time consuming. They find their way through a more fluid, less structured format.

My name is Jack Hardy: I’m a marketing guy, a seminar leader, a business consultant and an ex-CEO.

Recently I took on the task of reexamining business-building innovation. Experience told me…“People succeed at creating a prosperous and profitable business because — either knowingly or intuitively — they define their business development activities in terms of fundamental core values.”

• Could I prove this theory in practice?
• Could I define these fundamental core values?

Background...
In a recent survey of Inc. magazine’s 500 founders, one question asked whether they had written formal business plans before they launched their companies. Only 40% said yes. Of those, 65% said they had strayed significantly from their original idea, adapting their plans as they went along. And only 12% said they'd done formal market research.
Only 2 out of 10 wrote a formal business plan before they launched their companies. Their business plan was well researched and tailored to sell their idea to investors. They were raising money to invest in assets. Be sure, this business plan was all-inclusive and required a major investment of time and money.
All others – 8 out of 10 – strayed significantly from their original conception, adapting their plans as they went along. They built their business within a more fluid, less structured form of planning. There was no evidence of a common use of core values.

A Harvard Business Review report helped give credence to my posit: "Innovation works effectively if its strategy is built around a clear value proposition for the customer." (What Really Works, Harvard Business Review, Reprint R0307C)

This was the last clue needed to identify the Core Value Proposition. Connect it to 5 Value Drivers and setup a simple, easy to use 4-step planning process. Together this process provides a customer oriented solution to innovative thinking, business planning and development.