Norms Surrounding Business Plans and Their Effect on Entrepreneurial Behavior
Babson College Entrepreneurship Research Conference (BCERC) 2007
Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research 2007
11 Pages Posted: 6 Dec 2007
Abstract
Business plans are important management tools for new ventures. One indication of their importance is that about 10 million business plans are written each year, world-wide (Gumpert, 2002). Others are that business plans quite frequently surface in entrepreneurship education, governmental promotion of entrepreneurship as well as in the external financing of new ventures. Universities conduct or endorse business plan competitions, including Harvard, Stanford, Wharton and MIT (Honig, 2004). Banks, venture capitalists, angel investors, incubator managers and assistance agencies are other potential promoters of business plans. There are a plethora of books dedicated to explaining how to write business plans, typically suggesting that business planning is valuable and important to the new firm (Poon, 1996; Stevenson, et al., 1999; Timmons, 1999; Lambing and Kuehl, 2000; Wickham, 2001; Kuratko and Hodgetts, 2001). It is fair to say that the entrepreneurship field abounds with advice about how to write business plans.
Keywords: Entrepreneurship
JEL Classification: M13
Suggested Citation: Suggested Citation