New Venture Challenge Exercises[1]
Here are some examples of practical exercises or “New Venture Challenges” that students can complete during the course. These exercises are intended to give them some hands-on experience in dealing with several of the conceptual issues raised in the course and to think about some additional elements of entrepreneurial activity beyond the requirements of the business plan. You can select the specific Challenges you would like to include in your course from these examples or develop your own exercises. Here is a general idea of how they relate to the various Stages in Building a Dream. There is at least one exercise for each Stage in the book.
Stage 1 What is Entrepreneurship?
New Venture Challenge #1, #2
Stage 2 Assessing Your Potential for an Entrepreneurial Career
New Venture Challenge #3, #4
Stage 3 Exploring New Business Ideas and Opportunities
New Venture Challenge #5, #6, #7
Stage 4 Starting a New Business or Buying an Existing One
New Venture Challenge #8
Stage 5 Considering a Franchise
New Venture Challenge #9
Stage 6 Conducting a Feasibility Study Part 1: Market and Technical Assessment
New Venture Challenge #10, #11, #12, #13
Stage 7 Conducting a Feasibility Study Part 2: Cost and Profitability Assessment
New Venture Challenge #13
Stage 8 Organizing Your Business
New Venture Challenge #14, #15
Stage 9 Protecting Your Idea
New Venture Challenge #16
Stage 10 Arranging Financing
New Venture Challenge #17, #18
Stage 11 Preparing Your Business Plan
New Venture Challenge #19
Examples of “New Venture Challenge” Exercises
New Venture Challenge #1
Visit with an Entrepreneur
Contact some local individual who you consider to be a real entrepreneur. Arrange to meet with them so that you can ask them about their experiences. In arranging this interview, be certain to explain to the entrepreneur that you are asking for the interview as part of a class assignment and that you will require approximately one hour of their time.
To facilitate the interview process, you should script it out in advance of your meeting. Develop a series of open and closed-ended questions you wish to pose to this individual during your interview. Open-ended questions can be used to cover such areas as how they got started, the sequence of events involved in growing their business to its present state, and the general conclusions they can draw from their experiences. You should use closed-end questions when asking them about specific issues such as where and how they obtained the financing to start the business and their need to find partners or partners to get their business off the ground.
To help in the preparation of your report, it’s a good idea to record the interview so you can use direct quotes from the entrepreneur in your paper to reinforce particular points. If you don’t have access to a tape recorder, keep a written verbatim record of any pertinent comments. Using this information, write a report detailing what you learned about entrepreneurs and entrepreneurship from this individual. Discuss any ideas the entrepreneur did not raise that you feel are important. Try to offer any possible explanations as to why the entrepreneur may not have covered these points.
As a courtesy, be sure to send your entrepreneur a brief note thanking them for taking the time to meet with you.
New Venture Challenge #2
Interview With an Entrepreneur
Congratulations, you’ve been hired as a cub reporter for a campus based weekly radio program, “The Entrepreneur’s Show.” Your first assignment is to locate and interview an entrepreneur of note and turn this into a script for a radio interview. For this assignment, an entrepreneur of note is defined as someone that has been publicly recognized for his or her entrepreneurial efforts. This recognition can take the form of press coverage or nomination for an entrepreneurial award, for example one from the Chamber of Commerce, Ernst & Young or the Women’s Enterprise Centre. You do not need to limit your search to your local community. Entrepreneurs from other parts of Canada or countries are also viable options.
Your interview should cover the reasons why the person became an entrepreneur, a description of their first venture and the most critical business decision they’ve made to date. The final portion of your interview should concentrate on having the entrepreneur identify the key lessons they’ve learned during their career.
Your paper should be written in a question and answer format with a brief introduction that identifies who this person is and why this person is an entrepreneur of note. There is no page length for this paper, but it must take no more than six minutes to read aloud – remember it is a script for a radio interview.
New Venture Challenge #3
Goal Setting
An important trait of successful entrepreneurs is their ability to set personal and professional goals. Goals enable the entrepreneur to plan effectiveness and ensure they are able to gather the resources necessary for their business. Entrepreneurs use short-term goals as a stepping-stone toward their longer term ones. Foe this assignment you need to identify your goals in each of the following areas:
1. Your Short-term business goals) goals you hope to attain in the next 12 months)
2. Your Long-term business goals (one to five years)
3. Your Educational and Training goals (one to five years)
4. Your Personal goals (for the rest of your life)
For each set of goals, you must provide a one-paragraph explanation for each indicated goal describing how it fits within your other goals and builds on earlier ones. This paragraph should also describe the resources you think you will need to achieve the goal. Finally, this explanation must describe how the goal meets the criteria of being specific, measurable and attainable.
New Venture Challenge #4
Personal Entrepreneurial Strategy
This assignment is a self-assessment to determine if you have the skills traditionally associated with entrepreneurs. Be aware that no person has all the skills identified in this exercise. Therefore, do not become discouraged if you feel you lack any of the skills identified in the exercise. You should also be aware that even those possessing a majority of these skills might not become successful entrepreneurs because of personal values and preferences.
The assessment consists of four sections beginning with a profile of your past and concluding with a projection into the future. This assignment will take approximately 3 hours to complete and requires active participation on your part. Although there are no right or wrong answers, it is important that you carefully and honestly consider your answer to each question.
Step 1: Profile of the Past
Examine your personal preferences by listing those activities that give you the greatest amount of personal satisfaction. Be sure to list the reasons why this activity gives you satisfaction. Now list the activities that cause you the greatest personal dissatisfaction and the reasons why they cause this dissatisfaction.
Think ahead 20 years and describe how you will spend an ideal month. This description should include a look at your lifestyle, work style, income and friends. What attracts you to this existence? Repels you?
Complete this sentence: “I would/would not like to start/acquire my own business because . . . .”
Using a five point scale where 1 is very unimportant and 5 is very important, rank the following in terms of importance to you:
1 2 3 4 5
Staying in Your Local Community
Community Size
Community Involvement
Commuting Distance
<20 minutes
< 30 minutes
< 60 minutes
> 60 minutes
Size of business
< $1 million in sales or 20 employees
> $1 million in sales or 20 employees
> $10 million in sales and 200 employees
Rate of Growth
> 25% per year
10% to 15% per year
Less than 10%
Confidential
Workload
Over 70 hours per week
55 to 60 hours
40 hours or less
Marriage
Family
Travel away from home
Standard of living
Tight belt
Average
Become very rich
Utilization of skills and education
Opportunity for personal growth
Contribution to society
Positioning for opportunities
Status and prestige
STEP 2: Examine Your Personal History
List any activities you participated in that (a) provided financial support, (b) contributed to your well-being, (c) you have done on your own.
Discuss why you became involved in these activities and the influences on your decision.
For each of the activities listed, discuss what you learned about yourself, self-employment, managing people and making money.
What lessons and insights can you take from your participation in sports and hobby activities that you can apply to life as an entrepreneur?
Among those people who influenced you the most, do any own and operate their own business or work as independent professionals?
How have the people listed above influenced you? What have they taught you about self-employment?
If you have ever started a business or worked in a small company, list the things you liked least and those you liked most. Why? Do the same if you’ve only worked in large companies.
Summarize those factors in your history you believe are entrepreneurial strengths and weaknesses.
Step 3: Putting It All Together
How do the requirements of entrepreneurship fit with your aims, values and motivations?
What specific conflicts do you anticipate between your aims and values and the demands of entrepreneurship?
What are the implications of this assessment of your entrepreneurial strategy in terms of whether you would proceed with a venture activity developed in this class?
What is it about the specific opportunity you want to pursue that will provide you with the sustained energy and motivation? How do you know this?
Step 4: Thinking Ahead
In three minutes, list the goals you intend to achieve by age 70.
In three minutes, list the goals you intend to accomplish in the next 7 years.
Rank your goals according to priority.
Using your top 3 goals, list any problems, obstacles and inconsistencies that you will encounter in reaching these goals. How will you eliminate these?
For your top 3 goals, list the tasks necessary to achieve each goal. How will you measure your results?
New Venture Challenge #5
Generating and Evaluating Business Ideas
Generating ideas for a prospective new business is a relatively simple procedure – the end result of which is a number of potential business opportunities that may, or may not, have a chance of becoming successful ventures.
Undoubtedly you have a few concepts in mind for prospective new businesses. List up to ten (10) specific business ideas, or types of businesses that you think you might want to own and operate.
Review the ideas you have generated. Turn to your textbook and take a look at the description of Buskirk’s framework for the “Ideal” or “Model” business in Stage Three of the book. Pick three (3) of the ideas you have generated and evaluate each of these ideas against the factors described in the Buskirk model. This evaluation will illustrate how well these ideas fit with the characteristics of the “ideal” business. Indicate how you would rate each idea on each of Buskirk’s nineteen factors.
On the basis of this evaluation, which of the above ideas do you feel represents the most significant new venture opportunity for you? Justify your response. Did the idea you picked score Average or Poor on any of Buskirk’s factors? If so, can you think of any way to overcome the situation or other solutions to the problem?
New Venture Challenge #6
Idea Generation Guide
Generate a list of as many New Venture ideas as possible. Thinking about any unmet or poorly filled customer needs you know resulting from regulatory changes, technological changes, knowledge and information gaps, lags, inconsistencies and so-forth will help generate this list. You can also get a list of possible new ventures by identifying weaknesses or vulnerabilities in existing businesses.
Expand your list by considering your personal interests, desired lifestyle, values, what you feel you are likely to do very well and contributions you would like to make.
Show your list of ideas to at least three people for review and revise your list to reflect any new ideas emerging from this review.
Discuss any insights, observations, and conclusions that emerged about your business ideas or personal preferences.
New Venture Challenge #7
What’s Hot and What’s Not?
It’s time to put your accumulated knowledge of entrepreneurship and business to work and analyze the future prospects of an emerging area of business. To accomplish this task you’ll need to identify an emerging area of business, for example, e-commerce (choose either business-to-business or consumer oriented opportunities), biotechnology, transportation, communications, etc. For the area selected, explain why you see it as a hot growth prospect, including any relevant statistics. Predict where you see this sector in 5 years, in terms of such things as market size, growth rate, competitive level, profitability and any additional opportunities it could generate and include your reasons for this prediction. Your analysis should include a description of any environmental forces you believe could influence this industry, for example government regulation, changing technology and demographic shifts in the population. It should also include supporting information from the relevant industry trade journals and other sources. DO NOT limit your research efforts to Internet sites alone.
For the growth prospect selected, describe the marketing, production/operations, human resource and financial strategies you would use to take maximum advantage of the opportunities presented. Identify and discuss any potential resource problems you feel would hinder this industry’s development, for example, a skills shortage, capacity constraint, reduced access to capital, etc.
Your paper can be a maximum of seven (7) typed double-spaced pages.
New Venture Challenge #8
Business Broker
Check the Yellow Pages for the name of a business broker in your community. Contact the broker and arrange time for an interview. During the interview explore with the broker a range of issues such as:
· Where and how does he look for potential buyers? How does he let the market know about the business opportunities he has available for sale and what media does he use to communicate this information?