What to Do Before Your Business Plan Course

1. 1 (c) John Mullins 2004 What to Do Before Your Business Plan Course John W. Mullins London Business School REE 2004

2. 2 (c) John Mullins 2004 The Problem: This Turkey Won’t Fly! Occurs for many student teams partway through the course Too late to turn back and write a plan for a better opportunity Students are faced with convincing your panel of judges why their turkey will fly (when really it won’t)

3. 3 (c) John Mullins 2004 The Solution Create a preceding course to focus on opportunity assessment and development Market, industry, team dimensions Deliverable: a feasibility study, based on actual primary and secondary research Either conclusion is welcomed Feed the best into the business plan course

4. 4 (c) John Mullins 2004 The Genesis of the Course “When a business with a reputation for poor fundamentals meets a management team with a reputation for brilliance, it’s the reputation of the former that remains intact.” Warren Buffett

5. 5 (c) John Mullins 2004 Research Question How do successful entrepreneurs (and investors, too) assess market opportunities?

6. 6 (c) John Mullins 2004 Point of Confusion #1: The Market / Industry Distinction What’s a market? What’s an industry? These are frequently confused!

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8. 8 (c) John Mullins 2004 Point of Confusion #2:The Macro / Micro Distinction Large and growing markets are important, but… Structurally attractive industries (in a five forces sense) are also important, but…

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10. 10 (c) John Mullins 2004 Point of Confusion #3:What’s Crucial about Entrepreneurs and Their Teams… It’s not found on their CVs Not simply about “chemistry” or “character” or “entrepreneurial drive”

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12. 12 (c) John Mullins 2004 Putting the Seven Domains to Work No opportunity is perfect – all have significant question marks or negatives at the outset Thus, the opportunity development challenge: Reshape: turn question marks or minuses into pluses (different market, industry, or team) Mitigate: weaknesses offset with compensating strengths

13. 13 (c) John Mullins 2004 The Seven Domains… Identify key weaknesses Questions to be answered Suggest avenues for reshaping the opportunity Identify key strengths, jump-start business planning Crucial in telling the story to resource providers Integrate and bring to life material seen (learned?) in the core

14. 14 (c) John Mullins 2004 A Final Note For the seven domains… Scores are not additive: summing the scores across the seven domains is meaningless Strong scores at the micro level can mitigate poor macro-level scores

15. 15 (c) John Mullins 2004 But don’t just take it from me… “When a business with a reputation for poor fundamentals meets a management team with a reputation for brilliance, it’s the reputation of the former that remains intact.” Warren Buffett

16. 16 (c) John Mullins 2004 If You Need a Textbook… The New Business Road Test

17. 17 (c) John Mullins 2004 To Download Chapter 1 for Your Business Plan Course:www.london.edu/faculty/jwmullins