Entrepreneurial Opportunities: Developing a Business Plan for Financial Viability and Profitability

1. Knowledge outcome- You will be able to develop in-depth Understanding of the entrepreneurial process of finding valuable Opportunities and developing a business to pursue them.

2. Intellectual / Transferable skills outcome- You will be able to develop an advanced business development plan which demonstrates creativity, independent thinkingand use of leading Scholarly literature.

High marks will be awarded to new, creative and innovative solutions that are clearly profitable and supported by details and evidence (research) that aim to attract finance: investment and/or loans.

The main Value Creation e.g. Value Proposition Canvas and the Value Capture e.g. Business Model Canvas parts and other elements of the taught syllabus (which includes the readings) should be correctly understood and applied.  A superficial understanding (i.e. not at QAA level 6) will not pass.

The syllabus contains many techniques to find and access new/innovative business opportunities that would be attractive to investors.

Opportunities must be a) feasible (not based on fanciful ideas and assumptions) and b) financial viable i.e. clearly profitable based on evidence and c) have the potential in future to scale.

Opportunities can a) be completely new or b) a re-engineered or re-imagined version of an existing business.   

Student must specify which techniques from the syllabus they used to develop the opportunity.

Opportunities used in previous modules are not acceptable, opportunities that are copies, clones or close variants of existing opportunities are also not allowed.  

Students can create new value by a) discovering new ends e.g. unmet needs and/or b) applying new means yo solve existing needs e.g. i) Block-chain, ii) Artificial intelligence iii) Carbon neutral iv) Circular no environmental economy v) Social inclusion and equality.

The emphasis in your work must be on: a) how you found the opportunity b) the novelty, uniqueness, creativity of the opportunity b) the financial profitability of the opportunity, c) evidence gathered using academic research methods, d) the realism and feasibility of the business development (value capture) plan. The value capture plan must be of a quality to gain the finance needed to bring the opportunity to reality.

Students are advised to use diagrams (e.g. VPC, MVP, BMC and other models), tables and spreadsheets to support their plan (it also saves on word count).

Do not cut and paste from lecture notes and websites etc., it doesn’t demonstrate understanding. All references will be checked during the marking process and should be from the taught syllabus readings or closely related sources

Intellectual / Transferable Skills Outcome

Marking Criteria  1. Creative application of accurately referenced academic principles, theories and ideas and from the module syllabus. (30%)  

Students must demonstrate engagement and study of the content of the taught syllabus and its core texts (Ries, Osterwalder and Pigneur, and readings e.g. Blank, etc. and other learning materials at a detailed level. The concepts used in this module are not self-explanatory and referenced definitions are expected at university level  

Use of primary and secondary data to support your decisions (30%)

You must engage with customers, suppliers and other partners using the VPC and MVP. Your decisions must be supported by primary and/or secondary data e.g. marketing research. Many students lose marks here by not providing evidence to support their plan.  The university provides access to several up to date professional secondary market research databases e.g. Mintel, Market Line, etc.   

Logical structure, clear use of English (visual, spoken, written), font, referencing, and use of word limit.  (10%)   

Communication skills in English are a key learning outcome.  Reference your secondary data sources carefully not just ‘cut and pasted’ browser web links. Academic references will be checked and those not clearly from or connected to the taught syllabus, or are of low quality e.g. (tutor2u) will lose marks.

See the assessment rubric at the end of this briefing for specific details of how to achieve a mark in your target grade banding e.g. a 1:1 (a

Groups will be made up of five (5) persons either a voluntary association or selected by the tutor.  The tutor will under no circumstances get involved in group C level management.

The first step is to have your tutor approve by email your business idea.  This must be done before the seminar of Week 4.   

Format: PowerPoint slides must be converted to a PDF file (to reduce file size) submitted to Turnitin.   

Word Limit: Ten (10) slides. It is a visual presentation use diagrams, tables, etc not words.

PowerPoint slides full of text will received a low mark and will have to be re-submitted, annotated detailed notes must be provided at the bottom of each slide.

Clear presentation of content on the slides helps the understanding of your ideas.  

Students must regard the reader for Parts A and B as potential investors/financiers. e.g. for Part A angel investors and banks screening new lean start-ups before allowing a detailed Part B to be prepared  Structure: 

For Part A students must:  

1.Full name and student id plus a photo of the students (all must be present i.e. on-line). Name of Product/ Service with a (one) diagram to describe it. 1 slide. Date of approval by tutor by email.  

2.Explain why this is a profitable, competition beating, value creating ‘lean’, investable entrepreneurial opportunity. Complete this sentence: If your lean start-up never existed, the world would be worse off because… 1 slide

3.Details of your creative cognitive work that applied elements of the taught syllabus to develop and validate the new opportunity. 1 slide. 4/5. Present and explain Value Creation using a Value Proposition Canvas (with extensions and detailing as per the taught syllabus) 2 slides e.g. a) Customer Profile b) Value Map. Note: Begin with Customer Jobs (the part of their life where you create value).

6. Mock-up/role play/demo of the Minimum Viable Product (MVP).

7/8. Present and explain the Business Model (means to ends transformation process) and an outline Business Model Canvas (Value Capture) (with extensions and detailing as per the taught syllabus) 2 slides.

9.Business Research and Data Gathering Plan i.e. The Part B hypotheses to be researched (see Ries Chapter 4 alchemy to science) 1 slide.

10.Principal Harvard style references listing a) scholarly works and b) secondary data sources. 1 slide. Note simple cut and pasted web references URLs (uniform resource locator) are unacceptable at level 6 1 slide.

Each slide will be allocated about 3 mins presentation time, given a maximum total time of 30 minutes plus 10 mins feedback from the audience/expert panel.  Students must take careful notes of the feedback as it must be followed up in detail. Have the Powerpoint available and add comments as your presentation unfolds and/or record the feedback on a mobile phone.