Afterword

Abstract

There is not currently a great culture of entrepreneurship in the UK. Anyone who has an idea for a new business is usually discouraged by people who will happily explain to them why it just will not work. The government are keen to change this. On the other side of the Atlantic, US citizens are in general much more willing to encourage entrepreneurs. There is much more of a ‘go for it’ type attitude. Making a business work takes dedication. It takes long hours and hard work. It means living with uncertainty and job insecurity. The rewards can be great but the risks greater. The rewards, if and when they come, will not just be financial. The satisfaction of having built something from nothing and being your own boss is a draw for many would-be entrepreneurs. Systematic, middle to long term strategic planning and IS planning will become more important to small businesses as IS are increasingly being used as a competitive weapon. This book has presented one approach which a small business with no knowledge of these areas could use to make a start at strategic and IS planning. The approach is deliberately unsophisticated, flexible and straightforward to use, with the belief, which is rooted in experience from working and studying small businesses, that any technique without these attributes will not be used by many small businesses. Even so, experience has shown that small business will be slow to adopt it.