Strategy: Your Plan is Wrong

We have no idea what your venture is or even your industry, so we won’t presume to tell you how to create a businesss plan. But we can tell you with 100 percent certainty that if you have one, it is wrong. MBA-style business plans, no matter how well conceived and thought out, are always flawed in some important way. Faithfully following that flawed plan will result in what entrepreneur Eric Ries calls “achieving failure.” This is why venture capitalists will always follow the maxim of investing in the team, not the plan. Since the plan is wrong, the people have to be right. Successful teams spot the flaws in their plan and adjust.

— Eric Schmidt & Jonathan Rosenberg, “How Google Works”