Stop Right Now - How Old is Your Business Plan?

This comes out of a discussion last night with "heavy duty" Network Tech bloggers James Enck, Dean Bubbley, the Telco 2.0 bloggers and economist Keith MacMahon, all of whom have been working on evolution of various bits of the (networked) tech industry.

We have all been noticing one thing:

(i) The world has changed, in a major and irrevocable way.

(ii) Most companies are still basing their business plans and models on work and research done pre crunch.

From our side, we've been working on strategies in Online Video, Cable TV, Mobile Data and Online Advertising. All these industries have had many of their underpinning axioms and assumptions completely changed in the last 3 months - yet many are continuing on paths laid down beforehand.

The talk with the above gang last night confirmed it wasn't just us seeing this.

So - you want Black Swan thinking, this is it - look at the current biz plan, look at its date, look at the date of the supporting data, and then think about which of those underpinning assumption may not last in the current environment.

And then give me a call

PS Loving the cr*p karma - always a sign that we've hit a nerve