Management and Life

A business plan or B-Plan as it is popularly referred to as, is an essential starting point for any venture. It is meant to describe the idea, context (need, assumptions, competition etc) along with the delivery model and the requirements for the model. The B-Plan is often mentioned in the context of a new venture and that too from a fund raising perspective. However the B-Plan can have many other utilities other than fund raise. Irrespective of the fund raise objective, a B-Plan can certainly help crystalize the thoughts of the entrepreneur, bring out an agreement amongst co-promoters and articulate the vision, business model and fund requirements in a cohesive manner.  In that context, a B-plan is also relevant for any existing venture or any expansion project. What constitutes a good B-Plan? There a number of templates available on the net and each person may have a different way of presenting his or her concept including the financial projections. However, the desig...

There is often a confusion about ‘Visionary or Entrepreneur’ vs. a ‘Business Manager’. Which one is better. Here is a construct presenting their differences in the context of describing the journey of transformation of an idea into an organization. The VISIONARY ENTREPRENEUR is someone who envisions and imagines a future possibility, a trend, an idea, a gap area or a business opportunity. This envisioning is not day dreaming or creative imagination. It is a result of a mixture of experience, understanding, data and intuition. A BUSINESS MANAGER on the other hand is someone who is data driven. He/she analyses the data to arrive at the trend and decisions.  The visionary or entrepreneur connects several dots to create a picture. . The business manager breaks apart a problem to reach the root cause and find a solution. A visionary entrepreneur starts from one end but is expected to take the business IDEA to the other end where it becomes an ‘ ORGANIZATION ’ man...

It is said that 'Entrepreneurship' is tough. It is a difficult activity requiring enormous grit, courage and risk taking ability. It requires the ability to deal with uncertainty and a lot of self motivation. A lot of such things said about the 'Travails of Entrepreneurship' are indeed true. As an entrepreneur, I have experienced many of them, observed them in fellow entrepreneurs and deliberated about the source, implication and remedy for them. Recently I realized another challenge or dimension to entrepreneurship. It is to do with accountability and ownership of results. In a traditional 'Job' scenario, an individual is often not 'solely' responsible for results and he/she works as per the directions of his/her superiors As a result an individual does not need to wait to see the success of his/her efforts to feel a sense of satisfaction or accomplishment. Pacifying the boss or justifying the cause of delay/failure to another source ...