Smith Business Close-Up

Perfect the Business, Not the Business Plan

Broadcast Dates: Feb. 5, 2009, 7:30 p.m.; Feb. 8, 2009, 7:30 a.m.; Feb. 9, 2009, 4:30 a.m.

Big news for entrepreneurs: Don’t waste your time on a business plan.

In this edition of Smith Business Close-Up with the University of Maryland’s Robert H. Smith School of Business, Dr. Brent Goldfarb talks about his new research that finds the way a business plan is written has no bearing on whether a company receives funding.

Goldfarb, assistant professor of management and entrepreneurship, worked with David Kirsch, an associate professor in the same field at Smith, to study the business plans of more than 700 dot-com companies from the late-1990s to early-2000s boom period. Kirsch keeps records from dot-coms in his Business Plan Archive, a historical preservation project with the Library of Congress. They compared the companies’ business plans with venture capital funding decisions. 

Smith Business Close-Up is co-produced by the Robert H. Smith School of Business and Maryland Public Television. The television segment focuses on the latest thinking in business management, and features in-depth interviews with Smith School faculty and other members of the school’s community of business leaders.

Where to watch
Smith Business Close-Up can be seen bi-weekly on Maryland Public Television's Your Business and Money. The program airs at 7:30 p.m. on Thursdays and is repeated the following Sunday at 7:30 a.m. and Monday at 4:30 a.m. on public television stations throughout Maryland and the Washington, D.C., metropolitan region, including:

WMPB-TV (Ch. 67), Baltimore
WMPT-TV (Ch. 22), DC metro/Annapolis
WCPB-TV (Ch. 28), Salisbury
WFPT-TV (Ch. 62), Frederick
WWPB-TV (Ch. 31), Hagerstown
WGPT-TV (Ch. 36), Oakland