Competition and Positioning -
Who else serves this customer need? Who might attempt to serve this market in the future? What advantages and weaknesses do these competitors and would-be competitors have? What share of the market do specific competitors serve? Are the major competitor? sales growing, declining, or steady? What are the barriers to entry for you? What are the barriers to entry for additional competitors? How could partners and allies best help you overcome competition from established enterprises or other startups?
Business Model -
Now that you have discovered an opportunity and talked to potential customers, how will you turn it into a business? How will you make money and when do you expect your venture to be profitable? What is the major risk to address right away (e.g., market or technical)? In other words, which hypothesis regarding product or market strategies need to be tested right away?
Learning and Adaptation -
What did you learn and how between the time you chose the idea in Week 9 and producing the final presentation and written report in Week 12? Is this idea a true opportunity or not?
The items above have no implied order. Some entrepreneurs start with a well-defined concept and then try to identify a market for their idea; others start by studying a market and then stumble upon an idea. Also, please keep in mind that the specific data and information you provide will vary according to the type of opportunity you choose to analyze. A key success factor for a successful project is the depth of your analysis and what you learned from it.
If after careful research you have determined that your business idea is not as promising as you originally thought, it is completely acceptable to present an OAP that describes why your idea will not make sense now rather than why it is the next big thing. An honest and rigorous analysis of an idea that did not survive further scrutiny is preferable to either (a) a half-baked presentation of an idea your team is unsure of, or (b) an enthusiastic job of over selling for your current idea, even though you know it is problematic.
You should be finished with the following and ready to present your work:
- Test your (OAP) idea from Session 9B by talking to at least ten potential users, customers, and partners, document these discussions, and share what you learned.
- Create presentation slides to share with your classmates and write a corresponding written report of no more than 3 pages in length.
Study Questions -
Consider the following topic areas and questions as you work on your Personal Business Plan.
Vision and Opportunity -
- What are your goals (career and/or educational) after you leave your university?
- What is your purpose, your values and your mission? List the 3 key questions that guide your choices. These should be essential questions that serve as touchstones to direct your life and work. For instance, how can I have impact? What do I love? What do I fear? What engages my passions? How do I want to be remembered? The answers to these questions may well change over time, but when the questions themselves are fundamental they tend to last a lifetime.
- What is the market and opportunity that align with your goals? Don't restrict yourself to matters of career or work; think more broadly about your opportunities to make a difference.
Marketing and Implementation Strategy -
- Create your market positioning statement. This may be directed at a hypothetical employer, industry, organization, or the world at large.
- What compelling value will you offer to your employers and society?
- How will you differentiate from other UAE students? How about from the broader populace?
Risks and Mitigation -
- What are the key milestones and checkpoints in your plan?
- How will you measure/determine if you have successfully attained these milestones? How do you define success?
- What external factors might affect (positively or adversely) your attaining success?
- Develop contingency and risk mitigation strategies.
Entrepreneurial Ethics, Personal "Board of Directors" and 6-Word Summary -
- Entrepreneurship is not all about personal financial gain. It concerns crafting a lifelong plan to make a positive impact on society. Character does matter. Failure is OK; unethical behavior is not. True wealth requires the creation of enduring value, which requires integrity and ethics. Entrepreneurship and business are not just contact sports subject to their own arcane rules, but an integral part of life that reflect the values of each participant. How do you plan to practice ethical principles in your daily actions?
- If you could assemble any three people to advise and mentor you, who would they be? They may be alive or dead, family or world leaders, friends or strangers. Why would you choose each? Is it their wisdom, their accomplishments, their words, their creativity, their character, their heroic deeds ...?
- Similar to popular "six-word memoir" exercises, please summarize your PBP in 6 words (e.g., "humanist engineer, global citizen, caring teacher").
Assignment -
What matters most to you as you contemplate your future career and personal lives? The entrepreneurial process is at its core concerned with "the pursuit of opportunity without regard to the resources already under control," as Professor Howard Stevenson of Harvard Business School originally said. This process is as applicable to your career as it is to starting a company. The goal of this assignment is to identify where you want to be and how you will get there. Do not worry about your current resources. Think entrepreneurially. Your personal business plan should include a long-term vision statement, the "external" opportunities that exist, your "internal" (personal) strengths, and a strategy for yourself and your life over the next three to five years. In addition, please share at least one "failure" from your past and what you learned from it in terms of maximizing your potential for the future. The assignment should consist of about one page (up to 600 words) that summarizes the as many of the areas above as possible, as well as the one "failure" wherever you feel it best fits. Develop a set of slides to present in class as requested by the instructor.
Want to get as soon as possible. The work must be non-duplicate.