A bad plan is better than no plan: A theoretical justification of an empirical observation

Abstract

© Springer International Publishing AG 2018. In his 2014 book “Zero to One”, a software mogul Peter Thiel lists the lessons he learned from his business practice. Most of these lessons make intuitive sense, with one exception – his observation that “a bad plan is better than no plan” seems to be counterintuitive. In this paper, we provide a possible theoretical explanation for this somewhat counterintuitive empirical observation.