Storyboards As A Business Plan

Since I have been sitting in on quite a few start-up pitches as well as continuously being pitched myself by all kind of ventures, I was thinking if it is not on time to change the current format for business plans. Let's face it most VC's don't even read them, not even the executive summary for that matter. Power point is more and more taking over although we are all sick and tired of them too - especially if they have more than five slides.

Since most businesses are like a developing story - wouldn't it be easier to use the storyboard as an example of visualizing you business plan? We all love stories, wether they are fiction or not , on TV or not, true or false. As a matter of fact, most good businesses have a good story to tell. Why not try to tell that story as you see it develop over time on a storyboard?

Using the storyboard as a format for describing a business forces you to reduce the crucial steps into single frames and let go of those long never ending paragraphs that nobody reads anyway. I personally use a lot of visual tools in my day to day businesses. My favorite so far is Mind Mapping wether on paper or as for the past four years, a software called MindManager. As a matter of fact, I went through all my University studies using mind maps, which some of them I still have left.

I think that story-boarding is very close to mind mapping, but helps you perhaps better to tell or develop a story. Going forward, I will start using storyboards for some ideas I am developing in parallel with mind mapping.

What then are my favorite tools? Well, except for paper and pen:

• MindManager
• Pages - comes with Mac's iLife (use the creative templates )
• MacJournal - not a visualization tool, but fantastic for note taking - especially the full-screen author with enable me to write with green letters against a totally black  background - putting all the distractions behind.

Finally there is Montage, which is a very interesting screenwriting software aimed at pro's - but an interesting option if you really would like to tell your story in a screenwriting format. What are your favorite tools?

Technorati Tags: businessplans, macjournal, mindjet, mindmapping, montage, startups, storyboard, storytelling, vc

Comments

[Goldie Katsu]

I love this idea. It even lends itself to creating a video of a business plan. Most people are visual learners and storyboarding gets the information in a format that is most easily absorbed.

[Michael Wray]

Hi Netanel:
Just a short note thanking you for your nice comments about MacJournal and Montage. We appreciate your support!

All the best,

Mike
------------------
Michael Wray
President
Mariner Software, Inc.
401 N. 3rd Street
#665
Minneapolis, MN 55401 USA
"Discover Your Inspiration"
[email protected]
Phone - 612-529-3770 x 704
Fax - 612-529-3775
www.marinersoftware.com

MacJournal & WinJournal
Live it, Write it, Blog it.

Montage
Screenwriting for Mac OS X

[Mat Morrison]

Couldn't agree more. Lovely idea.

At RMM, we use a few simple story templates to help us organise all our planning and presentation.

First off, we use Clive Atkinson's "story template" (see this "5 Powerpoint Things" post: http://www.rmmlondon.com/archive/five-powerpoint-things/) He works off a simple three act structure. It's great for pulling together presentations & communications. He uses a very simple 5-part introductory structure to set out the story in the first act:

- setting
- protagonist
- imbalance
- balance
- solution

Secondly, we use an even simpler four-part structure to help us talk through, simplify and understand the context and issues that face our clients:

- situation
- complication
- question
- answer

Helping them to tell us the story like this makes sure that everyone shares an understanding of what we're doing (and can uncover some things that one might otherwise stumble upon later in the project.)

And thirdly, there's a more specialised story that we use when we're talking through a client's positioning (or indeed, our own)

- who are your customers?
- what problem are they faced by?
- what's the answer to their problem?
- why can only you help them deliver this?

You'll see that there's a great deal of similarity between the three structures (this is great, because it lets us swap quickly between them)

As far as software goes:

OmniOutliner
NovaMind

...and any text editor that stops one thinking about formatting, and keeps one focussed on the job.

[Net]

Goldie, glad that you like the idea - I'am totally psyched on it!

[Net]

Matt, great that you love the idea. The story template sounds interesting but the link is dead. Can you send me a live link? Would love to take a look at it.

[Net]

Matt, great that you love the idea. The story template sounds interesting but the link is dead. Can you send me a live link? Would love to take a look at it.

[Kyle McFarlin]

Net,

I think I could apply for agreer in chief, as I've released a set of FREE Life Management templates for MindManager, one of which is a Strategic Management template that could easily be used not only to create the business plan but to actualize it as well. You can find them at:

http://mcfarlin.typepad.com/the_underlying_blog/2007/05/the_mind_map_li.html

[Paul Daniel]

I use Freemind pretty much every day:
http://freemind.sourceforge.net/wiki/index.php/Main_Page
I also find Compendium very useful.
http://kmi.open.ac.uk/projects/compendium/
Your post gave me the idea of using storyboarding to help work through the issues involved in setting up a CRM system. Thanks.

[Netanel Jacobsson]

Kyle, will check you templates out. Thanks!

[Netanel Jacobsson]

Paul, glad that my post gave you some inspiration. Would love to hear how the CRM story develops!

[Pankaj]

For Linux storyboarding I came across DENIM at http://www.brianburridge.com/2006/10/01/web-site-concepting-and-storyboarding-tool/

I haven't used it yet but thought it might be a worthwhile link for any Unix/Linux users. DENIM also runs on the Mac and Windows.

[Netanel Jacobsson]

Panaj - thanks for adding tool for Linux as well!

[Laura]

Hi!

I LOVE the idea of storyboarding a business plan. After having done 100's of business and marketing plans in corporate and then coaching entrepreneurs - there has been a desperate need for a shift in the traditional business plan.

I also love mind mapping - I use both Mindjet and Inspiration.com - I use them for different aspects.

You may be interested to read - I've recently created a new alternative and creative type of business plan. It's called the Joyful Business Guide - it combines mind maps, fill-in-the-blank vision story, adding photos, quotes, using markers and color - it's about creating an inspirational and passionate guide (it all changes too quickly to be etched in stone!)
You can check it out at www.joyfulbusinessguide.com if you like.

Kudos on your creative thinking - we are on to a real need here!

Laura

[alex de jong]

at cellspace we do it like this: http://youtube.com/watch?v=aPHMTriwZU8

[Mark McCoy]

I think that's a great idea - there's also a brilliant free mind map software for MAC users called 'freemind'.

Anyone got anything similar to the storyboard idea for Mac?