Business Plan Template

Business Plan Preparation

Instructions
Use this to record your activities and thoughts about your plan. Keep each week to use it as
a reference for your individual report.

Task

Evaluate your simulation activity this week, recording activities and impact this will have on
the development of your business plan:

Please note that you can use Adobe Reader DC to write your answer here and to annotate
the business plan.

Business Plan Guidelines

A business plan is a clear summary of your intended strategy covering targets, long-term
goals and practices to achieve them. This should be short – use bullet points, diagrams and
tables. Your plan should inform how you act in the business simulation and provide points
for reflection in developing your company and for your assessments. You need to present
your plan to your seminar tutor by end of week 4, updating it when you make changes. The
aim is to organise your plan under the following aspects.
1. Competitive strategy
Describe your general strategy for your company. This sets out how you plan to accomplish
your vision over the business simulation.
Reading:
Mintzberg, H. 1987. The strategy concept 1: Five p's for strategy. California Management
Review, 30.
Porter, M.E. (1985). Competitive advantage: Creating and sustaining superior performance,
Free Press.
2. SWOT
Include your analysis of your own company. This may change over time as you progress or
change your targets. Take care to consider both internal environment
(strengths/weaknesses) and external environment (opportunities/ threats) and whether
something can contribute to both e.g. a strength and a weakness.
Reading:
Hill, T. and R. Westbrook, (1997) SWOT Analysis: It's Time for a Product Recall, Long Range
Planning, 30, 46–52;
Venzin, M., (2015). SWOT Analysis: Such a Waste of Time?,
http://ideas.sdabocconi.it/strategy/archives/3405
3. Vision
Your vision covers what your company is about and how it plans to achieve it. Objectives
should align to the overall company direction. Your responses to your performance and
change in the game should uphold the values and vision of your company.
Reading:
Campbell, A. & Yeung, S. (1991). Creating a sense of mission. Long Range Panning, 24, 4, 10-
20.
Collins, J. C., & Porras, J. I. (1996). Building your company’s vision. Harvard Business Review.
74(5): 65-77.
4. Targets
Set out the targets you aim to achieve each round and include a summary of your expected
overall performance. Targets should link to your balanced scorecard. You can use all the data
from the simulation that are useful to the success of your organisation (e.g. employee
performance, R&D, social responsibility etc.). This will depend on what your organisation is
trying to achieve and how each is important for its success.
It is important that your targets are aligned to your overall business strategy and that they
are suitable to measure your steps towards your goals.

Reading:
Kaplan, R.S., & Norton, D. R. (2005). The balanced scorecard: measures that drive
performance. Harvard Business Review, 83(7/8), 172-180.
5. Long-term goals
Record your long-term goals to set out what success is for your company. This should set the
overall direction for your company and give you clear ideas about how to align decisions to
your strategy and fit your strategy to the external environment.
Reading
Mintzberg, H. & Waters, J. A. 1985. Of strategies, deliberate and emergent. Strategic
Management Journal, 6, 257-272.
Porter, M. E. (1996). What is strategy? Harvard Business Review, 74(6): 61-78)
6. Growth
Record your approach to growth by using a corporate planning approach covering product
development and market choice (Ansoff Matrix). This should be developed from
understanding which aspects of your business you want to grow? Why? How?
Reading
Ansoff, H. I., 1957, Strategies for Diversification, Harvard Business Review, 113–124.

7. Supporting analysis
Record all the information that you collect from the simulation to support your decisions
each week. This should cover:
 Market choice and customer segment
 Competition strategy – how you will compete, with who (and on what)
 HR strategy
 Marketing direction
 Logistics choices (capacity, suppliers etc)
 Key trends in the industry and how attractive it is
 Your internal capabilities that help you to achieve your strategy
 Your financial plan
Reading
Barney, J. (1991). Firm resources and sustained competitive advantage. Journal of
Management, 17(1): 99-120
Porter, M.E. (2008). The five competitive forces that shape strategy. Harvard Business
Review, 86 (1): 78-93

See Reading list for further subject specific topics

NOTE
A strategy should reflect your intended course of action at a point in time. If results,
decisions or performance raise questions about your strategy it is important to reflect on
what needs to change and making changes based on your understanding. This is important
to record as you will discuss your progress and development in your assessment.
Business plan template

Business Plan Selected period (number of quarters)

Competitive 
strategy

SWOT 

Vision 

Targets 

Long-term goals 

Growth 

Supporting 
analysis