INSTANT MBA: Business Plans Are Important And Necessary

Today's advice comes from Jeff Bezos, founder and CEO of Amazon.

"So, you want to start a company.

"Well, the first thing you do is you should write a business plan, and so I did that. I wrote about a 30-page business plan. I wrote a first draft. In fact, I wrote the first draft on the car trip from the East Coast to the West Coast. And, that is very helpful.

"You know the business plan won't survive its first encounters with reality. It will always be different. The reality will never be the plan, but the discipline of writing the plan forces you to think through some of the issues and to get sort of mentally comfortable in the space. Then you start to understand, if you push on this knob this will move over here and so on. So, that's the first step."

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See Also:

• INSTANT MBA: Don't Interview People For The Job, Interview Them For Their Personalities
• INSTANT MBA: Make Every Employee the CEO
• INSTANT MBA: Innovators Ignore What Experts Say

INSTANT MBA: Business Plans Are Important And Necessary

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ACLU Says Net Neutrality Necessary For Free Speech

eldavojohn writes "The ACLU has recently identified Network Neutrality a key free speech issue and said in a lengthy PDF report: 'Freedom of expression isn't worth much if the forums where people actually make use of it are not themselves free. And the Internet is without doubt the primary place where Americans exercise their right to free expression. It's a newspaper, an entertainment medium, a reference work, a therapist's office, a soapbox, a debating stand. It is the closest thing ever invented to a true "free market" of ideas.' The report then goes on to argue that ISPs have incentive and capability of interfering with internet traffic. And not only that but the argument that it is only 'theoretical' are bogus given they list ten high profile cases of it actually happening. If the ACLU can successfully argue that Net Neutrality is a First Amendment Issue then it might not matter what businesses (who fall on either side of the issue) want the government to do."