BUSI 435 Week 2 Discussion Board Forum 1 Replies Example

Discussion Board Forum 1 Replies: What Makes an Entrepreneur

BUSI 435 Small Business Entrepreneurship, Discussion Board Forum 1 Replies

Thread by [Student Name]

The two classmates and their threads are composites; the textbook and the research cited are real, and the structure follows Liberty's public course guide for BUSI 435.

Reply to Jordan

Jordan, you argued that a business plan is a waste of time for a small startup because the market will change the plan anyway, and you are right that many plans are written once for a bank and never opened again. The research suggests, though, that planning itself can help when it shapes early decisions. Delmar and Shane (2003) tracked Swedish startups from their first months; founders who wrote a plan before most other startup steps were less likely to give up on the venture and got their product and organization built faster. Planning, in their account, helped founders make decisions and coordinate actions efficiently.

Brinckmann et al. (2010) combined many studies and found a positive overall relationship between business planning and performance in small firms, with the effect depending on context, for example stronger for established small firms than for brand-new ones. A plan is valuable when it is a working tool for deciding what to test first, not a document produced to impress a lender.

That suggests a middle path for your example of a lawn care startup: a short plan that lists the key assumptions, such as how many customers will sign up for weekly service, and the cheapest way to test each one, updated every month. Scarborough (2016) treats the feasibility analysis as exactly that kind of early test. Research also cautions that planning helps most when it is revisited, so the two-page plan should be reviewed after each test rather than filed away. It would also give a lender or partner something concrete to review. Would a two-page plan like that change your view?

Reply to Brianna

Brianna, I agree that passion matters, and your example of a family restaurant whose owners worked eighty-hour weeks through a difficult first year shows how commitment can carry a business through early setbacks. I want to complicate one assumption in your thread, though: that a business that closes has failed. Headd (2003) studied new employer firms using Census Bureau data and found that many closed businesses were successful at the time they closed; their owners closed them to retire, to pursue other opportunities or because they had reached their goals, not because the businesses were losing money. Closure and failure, in other words, are different outcomes.

This matters for how we judge passion. A passionate owner may keep a struggling business open long after the evidence says to stop, losing savings that could fund a better idea. Scarborough (2016) describes the entrepreneurial mind as combining commitment with a realistic tolerance for risk, and passion works best when it is paired with clear signals for when to change course. In your restaurant example, the owners might have set specific measures, such as monthly sales or cash on hand, that would tell them whether to keep going, adjust the menu or sell. Passion supplies the energy to keep going, and measures supply the judgment about where to go, so the two work best together. How do you think the owners decided they could keep going through that first year?

References

Brinckmann, J., Grichnik, D., & Kapsa, D. (2010). Should entrepreneurs plan or just storm the castle? A meta-analysis on contextual factors impacting the business planning-performance relationship in small firms. Journal of Business Venturing, 25(1), 24-40. https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2008.10.007

Delmar, F., & Shane, S. (2003). Does business planning facilitate the development of new ventures? Strategic Management Journal, 24(12), 1165-1185. https://doi.org/10.1002/smj.349

Headd, B. (2003). Redefining business success: Distinguishing between closure and failure. Small Business Economics, 21(1), 51-61. https://doi.org/10.1023/A:1024433630958

Scarborough, N. M. (2016). Essentials of entrepreneurship and small business management (8th ed.). Pearson.