A 2023 study comparing a manually prepared business plan with one created using ChatGPT provides an interesting lesson about the difference between structuring a business plan and developing a business concept.

In the study, ChatGPT was given a predefined business-plan structure and asked to generate content for the different sections. It was able to organize the plan, suggest headings, draft general descriptions, and provide content around areas such as mission, vision, customers, products, and implementation.

In that sense, the result was closer to an advanced business-plan outline or template than a fully developed business plan.

And that distinction matters.

A business plan is not strong simply because all the expected sections are present.

The real work is developing what sits behind those sections:

• understanding the actual market;

• identifying the real customer;

• evaluating competitors;

• validating the business model;

• developing realistic revenue assumptions;

• understanding operational requirements;

• testing financial feasibility;

• identifying risks;

• and making sure all parts of the business concept work together.

The study found that the manually developed plan was much stronger where real-world information, current market knowledge, field research, and logical connections between different parts of the business were required.

This suggests that AI can be very useful at the structure stage.

It can help answer:

What should a business plan contain?
How should the information be organized?
What areas should be considered?

But that is different from answering:

Does this particular business concept actually make sense?

A template can tell you where the market analysis belongs. It cannot, by itself, replace the work required to understand that market.

It can create a financial section, but the quality of that section still depends on whether the assumptions behind the numbers are realistic.

It can identify risks, but meaningful risk analysis requires understanding the specific business, industry, location, financing structure, and operating environment.

Today’s AI systems are much more capable than the ChatGPT 3.5 model used in the 2023 study. They can assist with research, analysis, financial modeling, and scenario planning.

But the central lesson still holds:

Creating the structure of a business plan is not the same as developing the business behind it.

AI can make the process faster and provide a strong framework.

The real value comes from what is built inside that framework.

Source: Matej Požarnik, Matej Rajšp, Jure Mohar & Lea Robič Mohar, Analysis of Effectiveness and Quality of AI Tools: Comparison Between a Manually Created Business Plan and the one Created by Using ChatGPT (2023).