Business Plan Development

Prof. Paul Knight
Spring - 0.5 credit
(Pre-Requisite: Entrepreneurship)
 
The aim of any business or strategic plan is to see it successfully implemented.  The problems are the same for executives in large corporations as they are for the entrepreneur in an emerging company.  This course will focus on the way to develop a business plan designed to either start a new venture, or to take an existing company into a new market.

The process of thinking about, and then writing, the plan is more valuable than the plan itself.  The process of your thinking and analysis challenges you to answer some fundamental questions about your business and yourself.  The plans that generally attract interest are strategic business plans addressing the key issues like how to get out into the marketplace and attract new business.  This means you must start, not just with an idea, but with some strategic foundation; what sort of business are you trying to create? before you start writing your detailed plan.

Alice came to a fork in the road.
‘Which road do I take?´ she asked,
‘Where do you want to go?´ responded the Cheshire cat.
‘I don´t know´, Alice answered.
‘Then´, said the cat ‘it doesn´t matter´.

Lewis Carroll, Alice in Wonderland

A strategic plan will explain what kind of company you want to create and the key elements that you have to have in place to get there.  It sets out your vision and specific goals for the business, describes your target clients and your target project, it defines what sets your business apart and your market positioning.  Without determining these elements you are like Alice at the fork in the road.

To do this requires you to use the business plan development process to refine and improve your original business idea. Ideas need to be generated and validated as a real business opportunity. The course starts with this premise and then goes on to consider; concept and prototype development, research, assumption verification and practical implementation issues before reaching the summary of the whole process in the preparation of a formal business plan.

The course comprises a number of parts which cover the elements needed to write a business plan:
- How to build a competitive business strategy
- Organizational and management structures
- Market research and building a marketing plan
- Plan and develop the financial statement projections

At the end of the course participants should be able to;
(1) Consider the complexities of starting and managing a growth oriented venture
(2) Organize a business idea into a formal business plan
(3) Be encouraged to take advantage of emerging business opportunities;

Course objectives include:
- To evaluate in depth a structure and format to evaluate commercial potential of business ideas
- To provide feedback and mutual support for the development of business plans
- To prepare a commercial opportunity assessment which can form a part of the student´s final end of year business plan project

Topics to be discussed are as follows:
- Screening venture opportunities
- Clarifying the entrepreneurial value chain
- Modeling business success
- Defining critical management capabilities
- Managing key stakeholders
- Action steps