Business Plan - Mass Customization - Due by End of October

Guidelines for Writing a Business Plan1 Goal: (1) Describe the customized product or service you propose to develop in terms of its customizable attributes, design features, target market and sales strategy. (2) Identify and describe the key business attributes of the company that will development this product or service, including its goals, growth potential, organizational structure, major competitors, and financial management. Description: The business plan is a core component of the term project. It is where the customized product or service you are developing begins to take shape. The business plan should be written collaboratively by the group (see “Suggested workflow...”). Important tips before you start 1. Read the articles “New Product Development Practice Application to an Early-Stage Firm: The Case of the PaperPro – StackMaster” and “Strategic Sales Management: A Boardroom Issue” to enhance your understanding of the process of new product development and strategic management issues. 2. Understand that the business plan should tell a compelling story about your business, explaining who, what, when, where, how and why. 3. The business plan should be focused and clear. It is not about the number of pages or style of the cover. 4. The plan should define specific business objectives and goals with general parameters to guide the organization. 5. A good business plan is a living document. It should be updated regularly. 6. Visit [login to view URL] to get tips on writing business plans and view sample business plans. Instructions: 1. A group member should volunteer to be the moderator. If no one volunteers, email the instructor who will randomly assign someone to this role. 2. The moderator should assign sections of the report to each member of the group (including him/herself), taking care to distribute the work as evenly as possible among the group. The sections are listed below. 3. The final business plan should be 10 pages in length, and should be named according to the following convention: [login to view URL] 4. The business plan should be submitted to Blackboard by Sunday, 11/17, EOD. Suggested workflow for managing group work: consider using a structured peer review system where group members exchange drafts of the sections they are working on with a peer by a certain date. Reviewed drafts are then revised accordingly by the author, and sent to the moderator by a specific date. The moderator then compiles the individual sections into a clear and cohesive narrative and submits the business plan by the due date. 1 This document is extracted from SBA.gov. Visit [login to view URL] for information, short online courses, and other useful resources.