Agreement on the Venture’s Reality Presented in Business Plans Purifying a Multi-Dimensional Measurement Instrument to Improve Validity and Reliability

The business plan is one of the most frequently available artifacts to innovation intermediaries of technology based ventures' presentations in their early stages [1] [4]. Agreement on the evaluations of venturing projects based on the business plans highly depends on the individual perspective of the readers [5], [6]. One reason is that little empirical proof exists for descriptions in business plans that suggest survival of early-stage technology ventures [7] [9]. We identified descriptions of transaction relations [10] [13] as an anchor of the snapshot model business plan to business reality [13]. In the early-stage, surviving ventures are building transaction relations to human resources, financial resources, and suppliers on the input side, and customers on the output side of the business towards a stronger ego-centric value network [10] [13]. We conceptualized a multidimensional measurement instrument that evaluates the maturity of egocentric value networks based on the transaction relations of different strength categories that are described in business plans of early-stage technology ventures [13]. In this paper, the research design and the instrument are purified to achieve high agreement in the evaluation of a business plan [14] [16]. As a result, we present an overall research design that can reach acceptable quality. The paper so contributes to the literature on business analysis in the early-stage of technology-based ventures and the research technique of content analysis.