Michelle Said:

is an executive summary the same as an introduction for a business plan?

We Answered:

No. An "executive summary" is the summary of the whole plan. It is typically one or only a few short paragraphs that give an overview of your business idea, and how you intend to set it up and make it profitable. This is the condensed version of the business plan that investors and the bank like to quickly review before they decide whether to read the rest of it or if your business idea is a good investment risk. For this reason, the executive summary should be the first page of the document.

The introduction is the opening to the corpus of the plan. This is where you begin to present 'brief' ('brief' because you get to go into as much details as you want later in the market analysis and business strategies sections) details about the industry that the business is in, how you plan to structure your business, and introduce a few of the more convincing elements of your market research which proves that there is a need for the goods or service that you want to sell in the location that you are proposing to set up your business. Look at it this way, you have to introduce your plan whether you choose to simply jump into the 'business description' or set up a subheading called 'introduction' and begin there. I believe that the latter method looks more professional. Either way, your executive summary still needs to go on top of everything else.