Executive Summary

An executive summary, sometimes known as a management summary, is a short document or section of a document, produced for business purposes, that summarizes a longer report or proposal or a group of related reports, in such a way that readers can rapidly become acquainted with a large body of material without having to read it all. It will usually contain a brief statement of the problem or proposal covered in the major document(s), background information, concise analysis and main conclusions. It is intended as an aid to decision making by managers and has been described as possibly the most important part of a business plan. and they must be short and to the point.

An executive summary differs from an abstract in that an abstract will usually be shorter and is intended to provide a neutral overview or orientation rather than being a condensed version of the full document. Abstracts are extensively used in academic research where the concept of the executive summary would be meaningless. "An abstract is a brief summarizing statement ... read by parties who are trying to decide whether or not to read the main document", while "an executive summary, unlike an abstract, is a document in miniature that may be read in place of the longer document".