People usually find it difficult to start a business even after obtaining an MBA or other business qualifications because of the fear of failure in a proposed business. Very successful civil and public servants have ended up using all their retirement benefits in promoting businesses that appeared to be very viable at first but at the end turned out to be very unprofitable ventures. Whereas, some stack illiterates have been very successful in that very business in the same market or locality.

Business knowledge has nothing to do with business qualifications but so much to do with business acumen which is something of an innate ability in everyone that can be developed. When a business have been conceived, it has to be hatched through proper planning. A business plan is a good business tool but is only part of a feasibility study.

If we consider an undeveloped oil field as an example, a feasibility study will involve determining the quality (physical and chemical), cost and time of production per unit quantity and the number of wells that will make production feasible in terms of man hours. It will also consider, the political, economic security, tax, production sharing contract agreements, license procurement cost and intrigues etc. it will consider the profitability (feasibility) of different available technology having in mind the financial and human resources available. A business plan on the other hand can show you that the business is profitable, assuming that the crude is of an acceptable standard: whereas a feasibility studies can discover otherwise and end at the point it discovers for instance that the chemical quality is too poor to make production feasible. That is, the cost of production is higher than the sales of the final products after considering the processing techniques vis-à-vis the current available technologies. Therefore a feasibility plan may consist of laboratory, engineering/survey or architectural, socio-cultural, economic reports and designs which are often not necessary in a business plan.