Perfect Run or Avalanche? An Ultimate Ski Dilemma
Ultimate Ski Expeditions provided just what the name implied: an opportunity for top-notch skiers to have the run of their lifetime. The company took grou... Read more
Writing a Business Plan
Recent Writing a Business Plan Articles
Getting It Right
It's easy to fall in love with a business idea. But the fact is, few successful companies end up with the same concept they began with. CEO Norm Brodsky disc... Read more
Learning Organizations Produce Leaders
While a company should some kind of succession planning process, "the bigger issue is whether thecompany is committed to being a learning organization," s... Read more
Keeping a Start-Up Simple
Once you're ready to launch, how can you make sure you start out on the right foot? In this excerpt from How to Really Start Your Own Business, e... Read more
Personnel and Business Plans: Making the Most of Your Management Team
Summarize Your Management Chapter Like the other chapters, the management chapter starts with a good summary. You may want to use ... Read more
The Fine Art of Writing a Business Plan
Bankers and investors are quick to complain that most business plans they get from hopeful entrepreneurs aren't worth the paper they're written on. Too ma... Read more
How to Write a Marketing Analysis
After you find out about your market for a business plan, you also want to communicate that knowledge to the readers of your plan. Keep your explanations ... Read more
Segment the Target Market in Your Business Plan
The market segmentation concept is crucial to market assessment and market strategy. Divide the market into workable market segments -- age, income, produ... Read more
In a Former Life: Jay Chiat
JAY CHIAT, 67 Present life: Chiat is the interim CEO of ScreamingMediaRead more
Presenting Your Plan
An important feature of business plans is the summary memo, a streamlined executive summary of 2-10 pages maximum. Investors often prefer just the summary... Read more
Simple Plan for Start-Ups
Your business plan is very important even at the early start-up stage. Even before you purchase business stationery or telephones, or rent a location, you... Read more
Basic Company Information for Your Business Plan
The standard business plan outline includes a chapter topic on your company, right after the executive summary. You may not need to include this chapter i... Read more
Venture Capitalists Don't Relish Risk
Probably the key fact for entrepreneurs to remember about venture capital firms is that their names are misleading. Though the term venture capitalRead more
Plan for Success
Wrapped up in writing a business plan? Whether you're stalled on the first page or polishing the final draft, the Web's business plan resources can help. ... Read more
Let Values Guide Your Firm's Strategies
Managing Upside Down by Tom Chappell. Morrow, 219 pages, $25. Even while he was experiencing wild success with his all-natural pe... Read more
The Possibilities of Partnering
It's easier to go from 0 to 60 miles per hour in business when you have partners. Reinventing wheels, growing each piece of your business on your own, and... Read more
Starting a Business You Care About
Before you commit to starting or buying a business, be sure you are genuinely interested in what the business does. If you aren't, you are unlikely to suc... Read more
A Plan for All Seasons
In Chapter 1 of the book How to Really Create a Successful Business Plan, author David E. Gumpert suggests that a carefully crafted business plan... Read more
Making It All Add Up: The Financial Section of a Business Plan
Financial issues tend to be unpopular among entrepreneurs. Some find the subject tedious. Others find it intimidating. The result is that many entrepreneu... Read more
After Hours
Being the overachievers that they are, many Inc. 500 company leaders are involved in extracurricular activities. Here's a sampling of their moonlighting effo... Read more
Understand Your Aging Audience
Agequake, by Paul Wallace Nicholas Brealey, 1999, 266 pages, $25 For the first time ever, the world population is c... Read more
A Novel Plan
Searching for a fresh perspective for your next business proposal? Take a look at celebrated science-fiction author Neal Stephenson's template for the "perfe... Read more
Brand in the Making
If all goes well under James Prosek's ambitious business plan, he will be elevated from mere fish aficionado to standard-bearer for an entire way of life. Pl... Read more
How Can I Dominate My Competitors?
A milk company builds a brand around organic dairy products. Read more
Children Having Children
There's a wave of company builders who are starting businesses when they're barely out of college, even high school. It's hard to quantify the phenomenon;... Read more
Take the Plunge and Reach the Heights
Novice thrill seekers may point to the ups and downs of the stock market, but the true aficionado knows that for all-out anxiety-provoking, gut-wrenching,... Read more
From Employee to Entrepreneur
When I graduated from Rutgers University in 1985 with a degree in electrical engineering, I immediately did what came naturally back then: I joined a larg... Read more
The Best Business Plan on the Planet
Go behind the scenes with one of the judges at Moot Corp., a world-renowned business-plan contest hosted by the University of Texas at Austin. Read more
Loose Lips Sink You
Even casual public chit-chat among employees can give competitors confidential information about your business. Here's what you need to know to keep your com... Read more
Who Can Help Out with a Business Plan?
Without a credible business plan, an entrepreneur has little hope of landing capital. Here's what investors will want to see in your plan, and where you can ... Read more
The Exit Strategy: Cashing Out and Other Premeditated Escapes
It was probably Jehovah who conceived the first one, and then some time later he charged Moseswith its execution. Churchill had one at Dunkirk. Westmorela... Read more
A Birth Legend We Love
Inc.'s executive editor tells both the official and unofficial story of why Bernie Goldhirsh decided to launch our small-business magazine 20 years ago. Read more
It Was 20 Years Ago Today
A look at the cultural, economic, and political climate during 1979, the year that Inc. was founded, and the entrepreneurs and trends that shaped business ov... Read more
The Entrepreneur in My Bed
A veteran business writer confronts the metamorphic power of company building as his wife starts her own career- and leadership-development business. Read more
The True and Only Heaven
Sometimes entrepreneurship can transform an entire geographic region. Here's how Seattle has changed since the rise of Microsoft, Starbucks, and other hot Pa... Read more
