Barrow Colin - Business Plans For Dummies

Business Plans For Dummies, 2nd Edition

by Paul Tiffany, Steven D. Peterson, and Colin Barrow

Business Plans For Dummies, 2nd Edition

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About the Authors

Paul Tiffany is the managing director of Paul Tiffany & Associates, a Santa Rosa, California-based firm that has offered management training and consulting services to organizations throughout the world for the past fifteen years. In addition, he has taught business planning courses at some of the top business schools in the country, including Stanford, Wharton, and The Haas School of Business at the University of California, Berkeley, where he currently serves as adjunct professor. He holds an MBA from Harvard University and a Ph.D. from Berkeley. He can be reached by e-mail at tiffany@haas.berkeley.edu.

Steven Peterson is a senior partner and founder of Home Planet Technologies, a management training company specializing in hands-on software tools designed to enhance business strategy, business planning, and general management skills. He is the creator and designer of The Protean Strategist, a state of the art computer-based business simulation. The simulation creates a dynamic business environment where participants run companies and compete against each other in a fast-changing marketplace. Each management team in the simulation is responsible for developing its own strategy, business plan, and program to make the plan work.

Steven has used The Protean Strategist to add excitement, hands-on experience, teamwork, and a competitive challenge to corporate training programs around the world. He has worked with both large and small companies on products and services in industries ranging from telecommunications to financial services and from high technology to consumer goods and industrial equipment. He can be reached by e-mail at peterson@HomePlanetTech.com.

When hes not planning his own business, Steven is planning to remodel his 80-year old house or to redesign the garden. And he confesses that of the three, the garden proves to be the most difficult. Steven holds advanced degrees in mathematics and physics, receiving his doctorate from Cornell University. He teaches part-time at the Haas School of Business, University of California at Berkeley, and lives in the Bay Area with his long-time companion, Peter, and their long-lived canine, Jake.

Colin Barrow is Head of the Enterprise Group at Cranfield School of Management, where he teaches entrepreneurship on the MBA and other programmes. He is also a visiting professor at business schools in the US, Asia, France and Austria. His books on entrepreneurship and small business have been translated into fifteen languages including Russian and Chinese. He worked with Microsoft to incorporate the business planning model used in his teaching programmes into the software programme, Microsoft Business Planner, now bundled with Office. He is a regular contributor to newspapers, periodicals and academic journals such as the Financial Times, The Guardian, Management Today and the International Small Business Journal.

Thousands of students have passed through Colins start-up and business growth programmes, raising millions in new capital and going on to run successful and thriving enterprises. He is a non-executive director of two venture capital funds, on the board of several small businesses and serves on a number of Government Task Forces.

Dedication

Paul Tiffany:

For the thousands of students and executives whom I have taught in the past, and who have provided me with constant inspiration and insight about the challenges facing management in the modern world.

Steven Peterson:

To my parents, Mary and Pete, for always being there to encourage and support me in whatever path I chose to pursue. Your love and devotion to each other and our family are beyond measure. And to my sister, Susie, for her deep and constant friendship, and for giving me the chance to be a big brother and an uncle.