The semi-finals and finals of Wal-mart’s Better Living Business Plan Challenge are today and tomorrow in Bentonville, Arkansas. The competition focuses on coming up with environmentally-friendly solutions. It is organized in coordination with Net Impact (an international nonprofit organization with a mission to inspire, educate, and equip individuals to use the power of business to create a more socially and environmentally sustainable world), which has a chapter at Carlson.
Here is Net Impact’s description of the competition:
The competition challenges students to invent sustainable products or develop sustainable business solutions and present them to a panel of Walmart executives, suppliers, and environmental organizations. In addition to gaining an audience with some of the top business and sustainability leaders in the United States, the winning team will receive $20,000 to invest in their business or product.
There were some problems downloading the feedback forms that I posted. So I have attached the two forms that we will use today. I re-formatted the individual feedback form so that it fits on two pages, which helps a lot when we are scanning the forms to send for feedback. Please use the re-formatted forms for your feedback.
Marti Nyman is confirmed to speak in our class tomorrow. Operations/Management/Finance presentations will begin on Thursday.The individual and group evaluation sheets have been posted on the website under feedback forms, here.
Here is Marti’s bio from the Minnesota Cup website.
Marti Nyman is a senior business development executive with more than 20 years of success in creating growth for Fortune 500 companies. Having worked across a variety of industries (Energy, Telecommunications, Consumer Retail), Marti has extensive expertise in strategy development, growth opportunity identification, new venture creation (M&A, Joint Ventures, Strategic Alliances) sales and territory management, relationship development and business execution. He has held leadership positions at GE, Ericsson, ADC Telecommunications and Best Buy. Most recently, he responsible for the formation and launch of Best Buy’s Venture Capital practice.
Mr. Nyman holds a Bachelor of Science in Mechanical Engineering from the University of New Hampshire, with a minor in Materials Science. He teaches a graduate level course on Corporate Venturing at the University of Minnesota’s Carlson School of Management and is on the Board of Directors at SAVE (Suicide Awareness Voices of Education), as well as the Advisory Board of two startup companies. Mr. Nyman has an extensive network of influential relationships across Venture Capital, Investment Banking and Fortune 500 companies.
I found this nice website that gives voice to real world entrepreneurs. Good resource to make yourself heard as well as to get a sense of good business plan pitches. Go register and pitch your company.
If you or anyone has an idea for renewable energy, you might want to send an application for the business plan competition at the University of Albany.
On a list serve, someone forwarded this article from the Harvard Business Review blog… seems to be apt based on what we discussed last class. What do you think?
I posted the slides from Tuesday. One note to those who were not in class on Tuesday. For calculating the net present value of your venture, unless you have a more complicated model, we expect you to use a simple two-stage analysis. You will project your growth in sales and net cash flow for the FIRST three years, and then you will assume that these values will grow linearly at a moderate rate for perpetuity (this is a constant growth perpetuity). You need to discount all of these values back to the present to calculated a NPV.
Also, I posted the GROUP Product and Market Presentation Evaluation form that I mentioned in my last post, here. I will post the INDIVIDUAL and GROUP Operations, Management, and Finances Presentation Evaluation form shortly.
We read through the feedback from the 5 minute memos, and have concluded that there is considerable interest in having more activities in which students apply what they have learned directly. So we have decided to change the schedule for the remaining classes. This takes a bit of the type of flexibility needed in new ventures, where things change rapidly. We hope the change will accomplish three goals. First, we want to make sure that you have learned and are able to apply the basic concepts that we have discussed in class to a new venture experience. Second, we want to provide significant amounts of FOCUSED feedback for each group, so that each group can improve their business plan as much as possible by the end of the semester. Finally, we want to provide a chance to learn to give and take constructive feedback as individuals and groups. Therefore, please note the following changes.
1. The stakeholder and relationships module (which covers corporate social responsibility and ethics, social entrepreneurship, and negotiation) will be summarized in just ONE class (this Thursday, 4/8), instead of taking three classes. There is only one short reading required reading: http://www.caseatduke.org/news/1207/Dees_Bloom_Ecosystem.html#cultivateecosystem This module, along with extensive supplementary materials, is posted on the course website under Readings/Module 5. Sources of funding will be discussed briefly prior to Marti Nyman’s guest speaking visit on April 20th. The syllabus has been updated an posted on the website: http://www.techventuresource.org/te-syllabus-20100406.pdf
2. We have posted a document entitled “Business Plan Outline” on the course website (here). It shows the basic structure of the business plan, suggested page limits for each section, and criteria that we will use in evaluating your business plan. You should address each of these criteria (where applicable) in making and supporting your claim of the worth of the business. The business plan grading rubric (posted here) references this document, so your grade will be linked to how well you address these topics in the limited space (18 pages (including the title page) of text, 8 pages of appendices) that you have for the business plan.
3. Each group will give TWO more presentations prior to turning in the draft of their business plan. Each of these presentations corresponds to two of the five sections of the business plan shown in “A business plan outline”. The first is the Product and Market Presentation. The second is the Operations, Management, and Finances Presentation. We will have extensive time to think about and discuss each group’s plan, and each of you will be required to fill out an “Individual Feedback form” (for each group). This form relates details of the business plan to concepts that we have learned in class. After having time to fill out your “Individual Feedback Form,” you will then have time to discuss an additional question with your group, and you will fill out a “Group Feedback Form” which will be given to the focal group at the end of class (this will be posted soon). After time for group discussion, each group will provide ONE specific and feasible suggestion to the focal group, and we will discuss this as a class. The total process will take about 30 minutes for each group as shown below:
Product & Market
Operations/Management and Finances
Presentation
6 min
5 min
Each student to fill out “Individual Feedback Form”
4 min
4 min
Group discussion and filling out “Group Feedback Form”
6 min
7 min
Discussion based on ONE suggestion from each group for presenting group
12 min
12 min
4. The remaining schedule is shown on the updated syllabus, which is included on the course website. It follows here:
a. 4/13 – Product and Market Presentations – Phase-1 Check, Juxtapose, DW-Eye
b. 4/15 – Product and Market Presentations – Tissue Database, Med School, Oncomir
e. 4/27 – Operations, Management, Finances Presentations – Tissue Database, Med School, Oncomir
f. 4/29 – Group Work Day (finish up plan and send it by midnight)
g. 5/4 – Feedback Day –
5. Your individual feedback forms will take the place of the second quiz, since you will need to apply concepts from class to provide this feedback. If you have read the readings, attended class, and REVIEWED the individual evaluation form shown on the course website (here) you should have enough time to fill out the feedback forms in class. These will all be submitted to the instructors. You can take the forms home to complete them, but if you do this, you must e-mail them to both of the instructors within 24 hours of class. We will compile the individual and group feedback forms, scan them, and send them to the presenting group. This will provide valuable feedback to them.
6. The individual feedback forms will be graded by the group that receives the feedback. Each feedback form will be graded out of 20 possible points, with the average being 17. Your grade for the individual feedback forms will be the average of the grades that you received from the other five groups. If you do not turn in an individual feedback form by the deadline, you will receive a 0 for that form. The presenting group has FIVE days to return the grades, along with a two sentence explanation for each to the instructors, who will return the grades to the students.
We will also review all of the individual feedback forms and allot one bonus point to what we deem to be the TOP FIVE individual feedback forms for EACH presenting group. Thus, if you get a bonus point for all FIVE groups that you rate, you can get five bonus points. We will also award one bonus point to the two groups that give the best group feedback form for each presenting group. So again, if your group gives the best feedback for all five groups, you can earn a total of FIVE extra bonus points. It is theoretically possible (but not likely) to get 30/20 points with individual and group bonuses.
7. The first three groups have a bit less than a week until they present next Tuesday, so you should all begin soon on preparing for this short presentation.
Designed to be an “open-source” learning resource for entrepreneurship. An important part of this course which brings together technology and business school students to turn ideas into viable businesses.
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