The purpose of this assignment is to offer you the opportunity to analyze your immediate environment
and exercise your creativity and ability to discover and exploit opportunities by using strategic
management concepts. This assignment differs from the strategic audit in that it requires a more detailed knowledge of specific business characteristics that are typically not available when analyzing the larger firms (i.e. cost of square foot to rent a commercial property, the cost of importing a specific product, the cost of flyers or an ad in the local paper). Also, I find that constraining oneself to a new business places a limit on the budget (i.e. bootstrapping) that can realistically be used to implement a plan. For example, when analyzing a case or performing a strategic audit on a large company (e.g. Apple), your budget is almost infinite—this is not the case with new ventures. The plan will be graded based upon creativity, timeliness, specificity, depth and breadth of analyses, and SUPPORT for your business idea, as well as your team members rating of your contribution. Please refer to the attached business plan outline for the structure of your business plan. The length of the business plan should be between 20-25+ pages excluding appendices.
