This is an individual assessment based upon your experiences of planning a new start-up business within the context of this module. Your portfolio should:
- 1. Document and critically evaluate your business planning process.
You should consider how your idea emerged and how it has evolved. Emphasis should be upon what activities you did in researching and planning your idea but also why and how. You should evaluate the value of such activity in developing, testing, and validating your idea and the problems or unexpected events you might have encountered but also how you overcame these. You should consider what you will or could do next with your idea and what you might do differently if you were you to repeat the process.
- 2. Contain supporting evidence.
Evidence of the activities engaged in as part of the business planning process should be provided throughout the portfolio. Activities which might include ideation and opportunity recognition, vision development, value proposition development, business model development; primary and secondary market research, customer contact, supplier contact, pre-selling activity, elevator pitching, resource acquisition, networking, training/workshop attendance, and engagement with external support agencies. Examples of evidence you might include may be directed study activity outputs, market research, customer contact, supplier contact, photos, illustrations, notes, feedback, pre-selling activities, support obtained etc. Where evidence does not fit within the main body of your work an appendix might be included. It is expected that, when an appendix in included, a clear cross-referencing system will be used throughout your work.
Your portfolio should not just contain evidence of the activities undertaken in module workshops, you must demonstrate you have gone beyond this.
- 3. Provide links to relevant academic theory and literature.
It is expected that your work will provide links between theory and your experiences of business planning through providing reference to appropriate academic literature and entrepreneurship theory. You should use the theory/literature to justify what you did and why and your evaluation of activities undertaken for example to support your assertions about what went well and what did not. You might use the literature to make suggestions as to what you could have done differently if repeating activities. Please do not simply describe what a source says about a topic. You should be critical in relation to the material cited within your work, discussing whether it has validity within the context of your experiences. All references should be presented as per APA style conventions.
- 4. Be well structured and appropriately presented.
Please ensure the work is written in a reflective style. This work should not be mistaken as a business plan. A suggested structure for the portfolio is as follows:
- Introduction
- Activities undertaken during the business planning process
- Activity 1….
i. Presentation of Evidence
ii. Critical Evaluation & Links to Theory/Literature
- Activity 2…..
i. Presentation of Evidence
ii. Critical Evaluation & Links to Theory/Literature
- Activity 3…
i. Presentation of Evidence
ii. Critical Evaluation & Links to Theory/Literature
- Etc etc
- Conclusion
- Appendices [If applicable]
Where to find additional assessment support:
Please consult the assessment folder on blackboard for further assessment support. Additionally, there will be an assessment briefing in week 7 of the module. During week 7 you are also invited to prepare a draft 250-word piece of evaluative writing upon which you will receive formative feedback which can then be fed forward into this component of assessment.
