This workshop was aimed at formulating a plan for a business by following 9 different categories. These categories were designed to increase the likelihood of a successful business by accounting for different factors that typically make or break a business.
These 9 different categories were grouped together and named the business model canvas, and below I have set out what these 9 categories were and the purpose behind them:
- Key partners – What are the key businesses you will be working with? What tasks will these businesses fulfil? – can’t do all tasks yourself initially.
- Key activities – What are the main activities that will take place within the business?
- Key resources – What are the resources you require to complete the key activities? – physical, intellectual, human, financial?
- Value propositions – What does your business offer to its customers? What specific problems might your company solve in the real world? What is the purpose of the company, to lower costs, etc.?
- Customer relationships – What type of relationship will you establish with your customers, and how do you intend to maintain these relations? How costly are maintaining these relationships?
- Customer segments – What is your target market? – mass market, niche market?
- Channels – How do you intend to gain attention for your business and sell your products? Which channels work best and are most cost-efficient?
- Cost structure – What will be your expenses in order to advance and maintain the business? Will you weight your costs one way?
- Revenue streams – How will you fund the costs?
These categories are designed to interact with one another in order to ensure a successful business model.
This workshop was also particularly useful for me due to one of my modules including a task of proposing a start up biotechnology company, and taking this workshop allowed me to incorporate ideas from the workshop into the proposed start-up biotechnology company. For example, considering factors such as channels and customer relationships were not factors I would have considered paying attention to when typically designing a biotechnology company, but proved to be areas which when given further attention made a lot of sense.
Another significant point given in the workshop was not to fall in love with your first business plan, and rather aim to create multiple different plans as it is likely that in your first plan you will not consider all of the necessary areas.
This workshop was really beneficial and interesting to me as entrepreneurship and business is something I take great interest in, and having previously tried very small businesses as a child as a hobby, actually having an example business plan was very interesting. Should I find myself building an actual company in the future, I’m sure the areas proposed in this grid will be brought to my attention.
The business plan used in this workshop was designed by strategyzer, who can be found here.
Thomas Nicholls 