LibGuides: Entrepreneurship: Business Plans

Now that you have an idea...

You need to learn about and understand:

The People: Potential customers (licensees, influencers, end users).
The Industry: Find the NAICS or SIC code for your industry and read an industry report.
Go to Business Insights: Essentials, click on the industry tab, and search with the code.
The Competition (companies selling similar products/technologies, licensors): Find the same way as the industry lookup but click the Company tab. Use Google as well.
The Funding: Potential collaborators (associations, organizations, advertising agencies, media).

Bplans
More than 500 free business plan examples. Includes planning and "how-to" articles.
Writing a Business Plan
US Small Business Administration
Entrepreneur.com Business Plans
Includes step-by-step "How to Create a Business Plan." Also includes more than 50 example plans.
Business Plan Outline
Suggested outline based on Linda Pinson's Anatomy of a Business Plan.

Anatomy of a Business Plan by Linda Pinson Many business plans have been powered by Anatomy of a Business Plan. Established businesses access it to transition from bricks and clicks, while business units within major corporations use it in their strategic planning. Every business owner, manager, entrepreneur, and executive alike can use this book's proven business-planning techniques to move their businesses in the right direction. Using this road-tested, step-by-step process for writing a business plan, owners and managers will be able to develop polished, professional, and results-oriented plans from beginning to end. Those results mean money, from the bank, venture, capitalists, angel investors, or corporate coffers. Results also mean creating viable, ongoing businesses and implementing change when needed. Anatomy of a Business Plan helps businesses all this and more. The all-new and revised fifth edition of Anatomy of a Business Plan is a road map to: Creating an organisation. Identifying a market. Setting up financials. Getting a handle on tax issues. Illustrated with three complete business plans, including a new brick-and-clicks plan, Anatomy of a Business Plan is the complete toolkit for business planning succes