Harvard Business Review Press Getting to Plan B

Lo que más me gusta son los casos prácticos de empresas que partieron de una idea y la hicieron evolucionar a partir de observar el emrcado (analogs y antilogs) combinados con hipótesis o leaps of faith, como los llaman en el libro. Muy útil y práctico

Gives you really great information about WHAT you NEED, not what any text books or wanna be a millonaire false promise books may offer

Cards on the table...I did an MBA and John led one of my classes. He was a great teacher, but for some reason neither he nor any of the other lecturers at my business school managed to describe any real world examples of revenue models, working capital models, investment models, gross margin models or operating models that stuck in my head!Moreover, I never really thought about them holistically, i.e. that together they give clear financial definition to the very loosely used expression "business model".The great thing about Getting to Plan B is that John and Randy isolate each of these elements, which link closely to the structure of the all important P&L and cash flow statements at the heart of most successful business plans.Now when I talk to a VC or an entrepreneur, I have a great framework for discussing the strengths and weaknesses of a business.Using the case study examples - household name businesses and social enterprises - which John and Randy present in Getting to Plan B, it is also easier to communicate the issues with journalists and non-business people.And the jokey "lemonade stand" case study at the start of each chapter would be a neat way to teach financial literacy at schools.One criticism - the idea of an entrepreneur using a dashboard to analyse progress against the business model sounds too academic and controlled to me.To complement this book, and get a rounded view of what it takes to launch a successful business, I'd like to see something which covers the personal circumstances, vision, mission, interpersonal relationships, salesmanship and other "fuzzy" issues which are briefly explored in John's previous book "The New Business Road Test".

There are a lot of books which claim to help the reader in business, each presenting a particular author's insights and experience as if they are the answer to all business woes. A typical book of this genre will take a single idea which could probably be expressed in a page or two, and stretch it to a few hundred. This book sits squarely in such a stereotype.When I first tried to read through this book I became somewhat disillusioned by about half-way through and gave up. The basic principle described in the introduction seemed compelling, but the execution in the rest of the book soon settled down to a few fairly obvious developments from the basic idea, interspersed with an increasingly similar set of case studies. I did not write a review at that point, and I'm glad I held off.After abandoning the reading and review of this book for several months, I noticed that I had begun to mention the book to colleagues and acquaintances, and was even thinking in terms of the authors' "Plan A" and "Plan B" approach when considering business opportunities. Eventually these niggles were enough for me to hunt out the book and attack it again. On second reading it seemed more practical and valuable, perhaps because I was happier to skip the bulk of the case studies and focus on the meat of each section, applying it to my own experiences.In conclusion, this is not quite the typical business book it appears. To get the best from it you may find that you need to set it aside for a while, or at least to leave wading through the case studies until you find yourself in an analogous situation.

What I really love about this book is the idea the title gives you.I've run several businesses. Some have failed, others have had reasonable but quiet success. The difference between them has been the ability to adjust and change for what the market is actually telling you. You might have a good idea, but ideas are worthless without execution, and this book tries to get you to hammer out the detail around strategic execution some more, and pushes you into the corner of needing to work out what to do next when that fails. It doesn't mean you will fail, but that you're always ready for when the change needs to come.Weird thing is, this book is a great idea, but the execution is a bit lousy. There are a couple of highlights, and the dashboard tool is simple but useful if you've not done any business planning before. However, as others have pointed out the examples seem odd, the style rambles and overall it feels like it could have been so much more.I suspect I'll come back to it and pick bits out from time to time, but is it a great business book classic? No. Is the idea behind it a great one? Yes. Shame really.