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Writing a Business Plan

A Brief Outline for Entrepreneurs and Teachers

How do you write a business plan? An outline for doing so is given below listing the sections of the business plan in the order in which they will appear in your completed business plan with a brief explanation of each section to help you get organized and guide you through the writing a business plan process.
1. Executive Summary

While appearing first, this section of the business plan is written last. It summarizes the key elements of the entire business plan.
2. The Industry

This section will provide an overview of the industry sector in which your business will be a part of, and include industry trends, the major players in the industry, and estimated industry sales with estimated projections for its growth. This section of the business plan will also include a summary of your business's possible niche and market share within the industry.
3. Market Survey and Analysis

This section will survey and examine the primary target market for your product or service, including geographic location, demographics, your target market's needs and how these needs are being met currently and how your product will occupy a position in that industry.
4. Competitive Analysis

This section will carry out a survey to investigate your direct and indirect competitors, with an assessment of their competitive advantage and an analysis of how you will overcome any entry barriers to your chosen market.
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5. Marketing Plan

This section lays down a detailed explanation of your sales strategy, pricing plan, proposed advertising and promotion activities, and product or service's benefits and how you hope to acquire the targeted market share.
6. Management Plan

In this section an outline of your business's legal structure and management resources, including your internal management team, external management resources, and human resources needs are summarized.

7. Technical and Operating Plan

This section is intended to provide a short description of your projects physical location, facilities and equipment, kinds of employees needed, inventory requirements and suppliers, and any other applicable operating details, such as a description of the manufacturing process.
8. Financial Plan

In this section a description of your funding requirements, your detailed financial statements, financial ratios and a financial statement analysis is given to enable investors and funding agencies to get a feel for your project. 9. Appendices, Exhibits and Attachments Any additional information that will help establish the credibility of your business idea, such as marketing studies, photographs of your product, and/or contracts or other legal agreements pertinent to your business.

This outline is expanded in a textbook. You are invited to contact Vivek at vivek.kilpadi@gmail.com.

oOoOoOoOo Copyright 2010 Vivek S. Kilpadi


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Here's Why All Teachers Should Encourage Their Students to Write Business Plans

Teachers in the USA are cajoled to introduce students to the skills needed in the 21st Century. Tony Wagner has included initiative and entrepreneuring as important skills for the future. Vivek's exercise, writing a business plan, is an important first step for today's students. Since many teachers don't have business experience, Vivek's outline is helpful for giving us educators a start for introducing this important milestone in the lives of future job creators. Here's a list of the Global Skills:
critical thinking, problem solving, collaboration, agility, adaptability, initiative, entrepreneurialism, effective oral and written communication, accessing and analyzing information, curiosity, and imagination.

Resources: http://www.21stcenturyschools.com/7_Survival_Skills.htm

http://www.p21.org/storage/documents/21st_century_skills_education_and_competit iveness_guide.pdf https://sites.google.com/site/mariodominoes/home/seven-skills


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Free Agent Nation by Dan Pink (radio interview) http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=girbtir3jOs Dan Pink's lecture about motivation on YouTube: http://www.youtube.com/watch? v=u6XAPnuFjJc

We're all entrepreneurs now. Dan Pink has shown how free agents can work

together in Free Agent Nation. So let's start using this business plan process as a way to create an interdisciplinary approach to learning new information. In other words, let's ask the English, History, Foreign Language, Math and Science teachers to work together to ask their students to create a business plan across the curriculum. Instead of isolating this business plan idea in one class, why not encourage teams

of teachers to allocate time in each of their classes to allow students to collaborate and compile/write business plans?

Vivek's outline is a good start. Please write with you ideas to TheEbookman@gmail.com. Students who want to share their business plans with me are encouraged to send their work here. Your efforts can help other students. You can be a mentor to others.

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