While waiting for a plane at Stansted airport, drinking coffee next to the airport book¬shop I noticed that people were buying fiction much more than, for example, the busi¬ness and management books on offer. Fantasy fiction, such as Philip Pullman and Terry Pratchett, seemed to be especially popular. So why does fantasy fiction outsell business books? Because people find it more interesting and entertaining, and it engages with their imagination. Yet the entrepreneur, in creating a new opportunity or venture, is also using imagination, but in a more practical way. We are trying to achieve a balance between creative and rational thinking, but the conventional approaches to planning #ften overemphasise the rational and miss out the inspira¬tional. So what can we learn from storytelling and how can this be used to improve our opportunity planning?
There is a huge amount of literature on 'how to write a business plan', which this chapter does not aim to duplicate. Guidance on writing a business plan can be obtained from many banks, business support agencies and other sources listed in the resources section. However, many business ventures are set up without a written plan, and research does not show a clear relationship between business success and having a busi¬ness plan. It may be that the orthodox advice to 'write a business plan' quite often misses the target.
This chapter therefore takes a different approach. It offers a flexible and imaginative, future-oriented approach to planning the opportunity, in which working on the 'design' for the venture and producing a viable business model are necessary skills and activities. A key task for the entrepreneur is to sell the business concept to third parties, be they investors, partners, customers or suppliers. Creating a credible and persuasive plan is generally an essential stage in doing this. Experience of working with many entrepreneurs in new and small businesses shows that they are often asked to produce a business plan by a third party, such as a bank, potential investor, customer or grant-providing agency, and the plan is written to unlock these resources. Chapter 8 includes the Aquifer case study of this type of venture planning.
The chapter covers the questions in the third quadrant of Opportunity-Centred Entrepreneurship, shown in Figure 6.1.