Business plan template
There appears to be a lot of demand for a specific item called a "business plan." Is there a site which collects example successful business plans that we can read? I know that when I was studying proposal writing in grad school, a valuable resource was reading successful proposals by the professors. What are the differences between a business plan and a thesis proposal? A business plan and a grant proposal?
I am most familiar with the business plan, but I would think they have points in common with grant proposals. A business plan has two primary purposes; one is to obtain the necessary endorsement and funding needed to launch the venture; the other is the roadmap for the team. In order to accomplish those things, the plan must show how and why and to what level the venture will succeed (hence the components such as amenable market size, competition, technology,financial expectations, etc); and it must also contain the operating plan for what steps we take in what order. Regarding my post about Opportunity Engineering or Discovery Driven Planning, if those are used, the operating plan becomes a series of checkpoints to systematically test assumptions. I assume a grant proposal is similar in that it must convince the funder to allocate resources to the proposer and must also define the path the research will take.
Yeah, sounds like a business plan is very similar to a grant proposal. A good resource for that is Dr. Bill Thompson's proposal class at the University of Utah. If you click on the syllabus you can look at his lectures for some knowledge gems on solidifying and proposing an idea.