“The book was easy to adopt.  It needed minimal preparation time. The feedback guide helped me improve the rubric I was already using to give feedback to students about their projects.  Students found the book very useful and the cookbook approach encouraged their critical thinking.  They stopped worrying about the basics (format, what belonged where, etc.) and instead spent more time thinking about what went into each section.   The book gave students the detailed guidance they needed.  Because the book covered all the basics, I could then spend class time focusing on helping students with their individual projects.
 
The linked Excel spreadsheets made the financial aspects of the plan easier for students. For students not all that Excel savvy, the way things were laid out and explained didn’t require advanced Excel skills for the students to execute the financial sections. This saved my time and theirs. Instead they could concentrate on what numbers they were using and why.  The break even analysis helped some of them realize that, for example, paying themselves $100,000 a year starting in year 1 was not even close to realistic.  In fact, they found to break even by year three they had to pay themselves less than $20,000/year or rethink what they were planning to do and how they were planning to do it. Things like this led to interesting discussions in class.
 
The sections of the Excel sheets were linked together.  A change one place was automatically reflected everywhere it was relevant.  This also helped students realize how each part of the business was part of a larger integrated whole.  They came to understand that business functions did not operate as independent silos or operate in a vacuum.
 
I have used ‘A Good Business Plan is a Beautiful Thing’ both with MBA students, most of whom had significant work experience, and with first generation, undergraduate.  The depth of what each student, or group of students, created varied.   The templates, Excel modeling tools and Student Resource Center gave my students the detailed explanation they needed to help them create better, credible business plans.  It also helped remove some of their anxiety about building a business plan and allowed them to focus more on the actual business they were creating rather than the mechanics of doing a business plan.”