Introduction

Welcome to the Business Planning module for the Fursa Challenge vs Economic Recovery. These materials are designed to support you in the beginning of your entrepreneurship journey. We wish you all the best as you start to build your business.

Overview

In this module, you will create a one-page business model. 

A business model helps you to put down concrete ideas about how your business will make. It helps you to capture the assumptions you have about your business. You are able to clearly identify what problem you are solving and for who, what is different about your solution than other offers in the market, what your revenue streams are, how you are delivering your solution to your target market and what metrics will indicate success.

Here is a video giving an overview of the important aspects to consider when building a business model. 

Tool: The Lean Canvas

Initially, when starting out, entrepreneurs had to sit down and write long business plans that were almost never read or ended up gathering dust on a shelf somewhere. Rather than struggling to write out a multi-paged document that rarely sees the light of day, the business model canvas was created to help entrepreneurs quickly put down their ideas in a concise, straightforward and structured way; essentially a one-page business plan. 

The Lean Canvas is an adaptation of the business model canvas, improvised to suit early-stage businesses and reflects the lean start-up approach of build-measure-learn. This format of a business plan also makes it easier to track progress and tweak your ideas as you gather feedback from your early customers.

For your practical assignment, you are tasked to use the lean canvas to come up with a one-page business plan for your idea. Here is a link to the template to use. 

For guidance on how best to adapt the lean model canvas to your business, this document offers guidelines.

Webinar: The Lean Canvas

This webinar from the Kijiji talks you through the lean canvas step by step offering examples and useful tips. 

 

Access the next e-learning module on Pitching by clicking here.

Additional Resources

Here you will find additional resources related to the topic of business modeling from KTN-UK:

Creating a business plan –   Whether you’re starting a small business or exploring ways to expand an existing one, a business plan is an important tool to help guide your decisions – it is a roadmap to success! This webinar covered another approach to writing a business plan from scratch. What you need to know, and the easy way to approach it.