Planning is important. Some companies however take this to the max and suffer of analysis paralysis.

No argument on the importance of planning when it is about thinking about how things can change in the future. If you fail to do this, you will always be a follower and sooner or later, a vivid and flexible new player will create a product/market combination that appeals more to your market than yours does (or can provide your product more cheap/quick/…).

However, preparing for the future by investing today may be a waste of time.

Just think about a non-business example:

How much mp3 cd-rom’s or with bad movie rips did you collect 10 years ago? Just to be prepared for the moment you want to listen to that one awesome song or have another look at that great movie. And now, 10 years later, you remember that one song, just to realize it will take you 3 hours to find your old cd-rom collection, 3 days to insert all those cd’s in your computer to find that specific song only to realize cd’s are not that time-proof as they promised…

It had took you 3 seconds to find that song on Youtube.

You may be able to predict your needs in the future, but with technology, people, industries,… evolving so fast, by the time you have to meet that specific need, there might be hundred new ways of answering your need.

Just to get your mind rolling…