An enhanced paradigm of entrepreneurial business planning
Creators: name: Hindle, Kevin
Publisher: name: Swinburne
Year: 2024

description: The research project reported in this dissertation discovered, applied and drew inferences about the utility and applicability of an enhanced paradigm of Entrepreneurial Business Planning (EBP). The project was motivated by the observation that a clear disparity existed between the teaching of entrepreneurship - in which attention to EBP has been intense and significant - and entrepreneurship research - in which attention to EBP has been negligible. Discovery commenced with development of an analytical framework suitable for classifying and analysing an EBP paradigm, should one be found to exist. This framework was created by combining the four essential ingredients of a paradigm - distilled from an analysis of several definitions of the word paradigm in appropriate contexts - with the three core roles which Mintzberg (1994) argued are the key descriptors of the function of any plan. An existing but inadequate EBP paradigm was revealed by a content analysis, conducted according to an adapted combination of the methodological prescriptions of Krippendorf (1980) and Carney (1972), of a large sample of the existing EBP normative literature: that is, prescriptions purporting to teach the reader how to write a successful Entrepreneurial Business Plan. A combination of logical critique, application of appropriate analytical models and development of grounded theory - based upon the methodology first articulated by Glaser and Strauss (1967) - resulted in production of an enhanced EBP paradigm, a complex construct embracing: (1) precise definition of application boundaries, (2) twelve laws; (3) six success rules; (4) and specified instrumentation requirements. Application of the enhanced EBP paradigm involved four research case studies embracing the case research methodology espoused by Yin (1989). Four Entrepreneurial Business Plans were written according to the prescriptions of the enhanced EBP paradigm and submitted to the marketplace. Sufficient time (between four and eight years) was allowed for results to be monitored. The four case study businesses were selected to span a variety of key attributes designed to maximise two things: (1) the ability to attribute causation of observed results (most particularly the attraction of the investment funds solicited by each Entrepreneurial Business Plan) directly the application of the enhanced EBP paradigm rather than any other possible cause; (2) the ability to make wide rather than narrow inferences about the applicability and utility of the enhanced EBP paradigm. Inferential conclusions were drawn from individual and cross-case analysis. Four points encapsulate the most significant results of the research to the community of entrepreneurship scholars and practitioners and beyond them, to the managerial community at large. (1) The research provides a basis for systematic inquiry in the field of Entrepreneurial Business Planning and a template for quality assessment of Entrepreneurial Business Plans. (2)It redresses the imbalance between research and teaching in an important field of the entrepreneurship discipline. (3)It extends the domain, credibility and utility of entrepreneurship as a discipline. (4) It is the potential generator of many practical analytical constructs and corollary theory in a wide variety of managerial fields. Extended case analysis provided two examples of domain extension and the generation of corollary theory and practice: first, in the field of 'venture renaissance' (a term coined to represent the domain of all non startup applications of the enhanced paradigm of Entrepreneurial Business Planning) and second, in the field of mergers and acquisitions. These two illustrations of corollary theory and practice provide strong concluding arguments in favour of the proposition that the enhanced EBP paradigm has substantial general utility. In summary, as a result of the research reported in this dissertation, Entrepreneurial Business Planning may be regarded as a distinct grouping of integrated techniques amounting to a managerial technology for removing impediments to business growth by attracting necessary investments on behalf of articulated strategies. Entrepreneurial Business Planning has thus emerged from vague definition amid the narrow contextual confines of a startup venture seeking venture capital, to precise definition in a far broader context as a generic technology for the removal of impediments to business growth, wherever and however they occur.