2. What is your market and what are your target groups?

A business idea only has real economic value if people want to buy the product or service.

In your business plan you need to demonstrate the existence of a market for the product or service, and identify the target customer. Questions you need to answer at this stage might be:

• Is the Unique Selling Proposition or Unique Service Proposition clear for you and is it clear from the customer’s perspective?

• Who are your competitors? What alternatives for your product are available?

• Which customers make up your target segment? Why would they be interested?

• How large is the total market? How large is your target market? How will it develop?

• How do you expect your market share to develop?

• What price are you asking?

• What distribution channels will you use?

• What advertising will you do?

3. How will your idea make money?

Most products make money directly, from sales to customers. In some cases you may want to go for a different ‘revenue mechanism’; for example, the product is given away for free to the consumer and paid for by advertisers. In your business plan you need to make clear how you will make money, how much, and what investments you need in order to do so.

Remember:

“If there is no competition there is probably no market” (Brian Wood)

1.2 Process of writing a Business Plan

In order to write a successful business plan, the process we suggest might look as follows:

1. Make sure you know what support is available to you (who/when/where) and make good use of it!

2. Spend some time in your first meeting on getting to know each other and agreeing on how to approach the assignment. Read the BSP manual together for more tips and details.

3. Following the instructions you got during TPM, spend some time on defining your product.

4. According to the agreed roles and tasks, work out the chapters of the business plan and check with your project team members on progress and consistency every week.

5. Finalise the plan.

6. Prepare a presentation for the investor.

Remember:

“Shoot for the moon. Even if you miss it you will land among the stars”.

“You look at any giant cooperation, and I mean the biggies, and they all started with a guy with an idea, doing it well” (Irvine Robbins, entrepreneur).

“The best way to have a good idea is to have a lot of ideas” (Linus Pauling, chemist).

“If you cannot say it simply and clearly, keep quiet, and keep working on it till you can” (Karl Popper, philosopher).

“Writing a business plan forces you into disciplined thinking if you do an intellectually honest job. An idea may sound great in your own mind, but when you put down the details and numbers it may fall apart” (Eugene Kleiner, venture capitalist).

Chapter 2 - The team, roles and tasks in the project plan

2.1 Why team work?

A lot of work will be done by the team or will be a result of what the team has agreed to do. Working in a team is an incredible learning opportunity and in this chapter we will give you some guidelines on how you might want to make this work for you.

There are three reasons why writing the business plan is done in a team. Now but also in your future job:

• There is a lot to do, more than an individual could deliver

• You will find that new problems come up all the time, a well performing team will sooner find the best solutions than an individual

• A team provides complementary skills by working together. Nobody masters all of the skills required individually

Therefore in this project the work of a well organized team is a very important element in the assessment, so make your team work !

2.2 Setting up the project team

Your project team is like a management team. Everybody brings in his or her individual qualities and skills, and together they can develop into a dream team. Questions you may answer in your team before getting started are:

1. Who are the members of your team and what distinguishes them in terms of background, education, qualities and experience?

2. What specific experience or background does the team possess that would be useful in realizing a business idea?

3. What experience or skills does the team lack?

4. What motivates team members? What demotivates them?

The discussions have a formal character. You are free to assign roles the way you want, however, we recommend you to use the following roles;

1. The chairman: he/she is responsible for drawing up the agenda, running the meeting and making sure decisions are made.

2. The person taking the minutes: he/she is responsible for writing the minutes of the team meeting. Usually the minutes include the main points of the discussion and an action list.

The agendas and minutes have to be kept in a project file. (see below). To give everyone the opportunity to learn about project work we recommend you to rotate these roles. Make sure you give each other feedback on the way each team member leads the meeting!

• draft reports of secondary assignments;

• feedback on secondary assignments (BP Committee and lecturers);

• revised copy of secondary assignments.