Dr John Mullins, Associate Professor of management practice, marketing and entrepreneurship at the London Business School, is co-author of the book Getting to Plan B, and will use the workshop on Thursday to explain how entrepreneurs can systematically determine which sections of their original business plans hold water and should be retained, and which need to be ditched.

According Dr Mullins entrepreneurs in most sectors quickly work out that; 'Plan A is probably not going to work. Your task is to figure out which parts are on target and which are not.

'We will look at how Apple went through the process and changed from being a company making PCs and no money to the fabulous consumer electronics company they are today,' said Dr Mullins who has been attending the Acere and Diana entrepreneurship conference in Fremantle, WA this week.

According to Dr Mullins; 'There's nothing wrong in having a plan. What's wrong is the way we've been teaching it for the last generation.' He said that traditionally both the entrepreneur and the investor expected the original business plan to be implemented.

It was instead important to be able to identify and articulate which parts of the original plan were based on sound data, and which were speculative and hence need to be tested in the market and subsequently revised.

Paul Hoff, NICTA's director of technology transfer has organised the workshop in order to promote commercialisation in NICTA. The event however was opened to both NICTA staff and third party entrepreneurs and all 60 places have been sold.

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'What I've seen happen in the last two years is that people are thinking about commercialisation. But the way you think of starting a business is that you come out with an MBA and a 40 page business plan.

'That works well in a conventional business, but it can be burdensome in a new economy business,' said Mr Hoff.

He said that business plans needed to be more lightweight and almost based on the results of scientific experiments. He said that Dr Mullins would be able to demonstrate to attendees how it was possible to take a business plan, identify what was working, ditch the rest and then quickly construct a new business plan which embraced the good parts of the original plan, but took the business in a completely new direction.

But is now a good time to be an entrepreneur given the climate of global economic uncertainty?

'It's a fantastic time to be an entrepreneur,' said Dr Mullins. 'Big companies have pulled in their horns'¦it's a wide open landscape.

'Resources of all kinds are cheaper, rents are cheaper and you can get better people. There's never an easy time - but it's as good a time as any other and possibly better than any other.'