Business plans are the tool existing companies use for execution. They are the wrong tool to search for a business model.
Steve BlankRead
Unless you have tested the assumptions in your business model first, outside the building, your business plan is just creative writing.
Interpretation
What this quote means
A business plan is meaningless without real-world testing of its assumptions.
This quote emphasizes the importance of validating the assumptions underlying a business model through actual market testing rather than just theoretical planning. It suggests that without empirical evidence from real-world interactions, what may seem like a solid business strategy might simply be fiction or a fantasy, lacking the robustness to succeed in the competitive environment.
Themes
BusinessAssumptionsTestingValidationModel
In practice
Example use cases
This quote can be used during a business seminar to highlight the importance of market research.
More from Steve Blank
All quotes →People talk about getting lucky breaks in their careers. I’m living proof that the “lucky breaks” theory is simply wrong. You get to make your own luck... The world is run by those who show up…not those who wait to be asked.
Steve BlankRead
You need to ask yourself, ‘Where do you want to work: startups, mid-size or large companies?’ If you find yourself debating the ‘startup versus large company’ choice you’ve already chosen the big company. Entrepreneurship isn’t a career choice it’s a passion and obsession.
Steve BlankRead
We now know that something between 85 and 90 percent of most software product features are unwanted and unneeded by customers. That is an enourmous ammount of waste of time and money that ends up on the floor.
Steve BlankRead
Greatest risk is not development of new product, but development of customers and markets
Steve BlankRead
Build and they will come’ is not a strategy, it’s a prayer.
Steve BlankRead
Similar quotes
Business men are to be pitied who do not recognize the fact that the largest side of their secular business is benevolence. ... No man ever manages a legitimate business in this life without doing indirectly far more for other men than he is trying to do for himself.
Henry Ward BeecherRead
If customer ignorance is a profit centre for you, you're in trouble.
Gary HamelRead
If you believe your product or service can fulfill a true need, it's your moral obligation to sell it.
Zig ZiglarRead
What is good for our customers is also in the long run good for us.
Ingvar KampradRead
He that would run his company on visible figures alone will in time have neither company nor figures.
W. Edwards DemingRead
Growth makes so many dimensions of management easier. It's when growth stops that things get tough.
Clayton M. ChristensenRead