Assignment 1 - Your Concept and Business Plan Competitions
SECTION 1 - CONCEPT DESCRIPTION
1. What is the title of your concept?
2. Describe your idea in 300 words or less.
3. What is the value proposition of your concept? Is there a market need ?
4. Provide a brief history or background of the team and the concept.
SECTION 2 - CONCEPT ANALYSIS
1. Describe your competitive advantage.
2. How will this competitive advantage be sustained?
3. What assumptions have you made in formulating your idea?
4. Identify any weaknesses or risks of your current plan and describe how they will be addressed.
SECTION 3 - TEAM RESOURCES
1. Describe your team resources:
Name:
Position/Title:
Relevant Experience/Background:
(Including relevant educational experience)
2. What other skills/experience does your team need but does not currently have?
To develop your idea further you should consider participating in an external business planning competition. Therefor you need to conduct some research about various business plan competitions and select 3 of them that you need to describe in an overview (e.g. potential business ideas, location, timeline, eligible participants, prices, entry requirements) and you need to explain why you have selected them to participate with your idea. Participating in such external competitions will give you further experience, builds your confidence, extends your network, maybe even with potential investors, and maybe there is a little chance to win some price.
Assignment 2-Market(ing), Financials& Grants
SECTION 3 - CONCEPT MARKETING
1. Describe the target customer and market for your product/service. What are the major trends in that industry / segment ?
2. Is this market expanding/growing?
3. Describe your distribution strategy.
4. Describe the competitive environment.Who else is in the market place and what are their strengths and weaknesses compared to yours ?
SECTION 4 - FINANCIALS
1. How will this business make money?
2. What are your estimated sales volumes, profit margins, overhead expenses etc?
3. Identify capital and other expenditure items required to implement the idea and estimate the timing/milestones.
4. When will this business break even?
5. Are investors being sought?
6. Has any funding (external to your team) been received to date and if so, where from?
Similarly grants programs are even better opportunities to elevate your idea. Similarly as for the business planning competitions you should conduct some research about various programs and select 3 of them that you need to describe in an overview (e.g. potential business ideas, location, timeline, eligible participants, typical grant sizes, eligibility requirements) and you need to explain why you have selected them to participate with your idea. Researching in such grant programs will help you to be ready for such support once you meet all eligibility requirements.
Assignment 3 - Investor Pitch (Presentation)
During the first 2 assignments you've been able to practice your skills to develop the main elements of a business plan. You should have received some feedback to enable you to improve each of these sections even further, Now it's time to pitch your business idea. It should cover all the elements of the previous assignments which will be further refined by now. The pitches will also be evaluated by your peers in the last assignment and you will need to evaluate their pitches so attendance of all pitches is compulsory.
You are required to give a presentation of around 7 minutes plus around 3 minutes question time. The detailed expected length of the presentationsmight need to be adjusted based on the number of studentsenrolled. The details will be announced before the pitch day.
Assignment 4-Feedback
Here you should put yourselves in the shoes of potential investors That experience should help you to also see your own idea in a different light, which really can be difficult because when your right your own business plan you easily become so attached to it that you can analyse and criticize it appropriately anymore, like not being able to the forest due to all the trees....
You need to evaluate all presentations given as part of assignment 3 (other than your own) on a scale of 0 (I won't supported this idea at all) to 10 (You will get my full support and I will invest as much money as I can afford). You also should add a brief comment about what you liked and about areas that need improvement, ideally with some suggestion how to improve. It also includes a reflective journal about the unit, a bit similar to the SETU questionnaire but mandatory to capture the thoughts of all students.
The ongoing reflective journal should consist of 4 different entries that you should develop over the Trimester. Each journal entry should be between around 100 and 200 words. The different posts are:
• Post 1 - Introduction: A profile of your background, a comment on what you enjoy doing and what you hope to get out of this unit. Please also post that on CloudDeakin to share with the other students.
• Post 2 -Teaching preferences: Explain which types of teaching you prefer and which not and give the reasons for these preferences, for example face to face lectures,i-lectures, tutorials, laboratory pracs, PowerPoint files, study guides, textbooks, case studies, e-books, etc.
• Post 3 - Please explain the most important lessons you've learned during the unit and discuss some of the challenges you've discovered when you tried to solve some of the problems given in the textbook. What are some unexpected leanings from this module, what ideas are you thinking about ?
• Post 4 -Please provide any comments on the teaching of this unit by the different teachers.