GEST-3162 Principles of Management

Business Model (group assignment)

Due: December 21, 2020

This assignment will teach students how to identify, create and capture value in
established companies or entrepreneurial opportunities. Teams of three students
may choose a project (B2B or B2C) of their liking, ideally in their primary domain of
study.

In this scenario, an existing business executes a new idea, product, or service using
already established infrastructure, resources, and business models; conversely, a
start-up does not have any of that and must build everything from scratch. Thus, the
concept is based on searching and discovering a business model that works versus
executing a previously defined model.

The Business Model Canvas is a tool that tracks the process of making assumptions,
testing, pivoting, and eventually validating a business model. The canvas takes the
user through a search and discovery process culminating in a business model based
in evidence and proof.

A. Design thinking approach

You will focus on the first three steps of the five-stage Design Thinking model
proposed by the Hasso-Plattner Institute of Design at Stanford (d.school).

All components are aimed at helping you develop a viable business idea, either a new
one or to enhance an existing one you may already have.

1. Empathize: The first stage of the Design Thinking process is to gain an

empathic understanding of the problem you are trying to solve. Exploring
experiences and motivations, you develop the best possible understanding of
the users, their needs, and the problems that underlie the development of that
particular product. (from research / observation)

2. Define (the problem): You will analyze your observations and synthesize them
in order to define the core problems that you and your team have identified.
You should seek to define the problem as a problem statement in a human-
centered manner. To illustrate, instead of defining the problem as your own
 wish or a need of the company such as, “We need to increase our food-
product market share among young teenage girls by 5%,” a much better way
to define the problem would be, “Teenage girls need to eat nutritious food in
order to thrive, be healthy and grow.” The Define stage will help your team
gather great ideas to establish features, functions, and any other elements that
will allow them to solve the problems or, at the very least, allow users to resolve
issues themselves with the minimum of difficulty. (finding links/patterns within
those insights to create a meaningful and workable problem statement or point
of view)

3. Ideate: It’s not about coming up with the ‘right’ idea, it’s about generating the
broadest range of possibilities. You can start to "think outside the box" to
identify new solutions to the problem statement you’ve created, and you can
start to look for alternative ways of viewing the problem. So, you can find the
best way to either solve a problem or provide the elements required to
circumvent it. (flipping seemingly impossible notions over to reveal new
insights)

Some crucial techniques are:

• Brainstorming – building good ideas from each other’s wild ideas.

• Braindumping – like brainstorming, but done individually.
• Brainwriting – like brainstorming, but everyone writes down and passes
ideas for others to add to before discussing these.
• Brainwalking – like brainwriting, but members walk about the room, adding
to others’ ideas.
• Worst Possible Idea – an inverted brainstorming approach, emboldening
more reserved individuals to produce bad ideas and yielding valuable
threads.
• Challenging Assumptions – overturning established beliefs about problems
– revealing fresh perspectives.
• Mindmapping – a graphical technique involving connecting ideas to
problems’ major and minor qualities.
• Sketching/Sketchstorming – Using rough sketches/diagrams to express
ideas/potential solutions and explore the design space.
• Storyboarding – developing a visual problem/design/solution-related story
to illustrate a situation’s dynamics.
• SCAMPER – questioning problems through action verbs (“Substitute”,
“Combine”, “Adapt”, “Modify”, “Put to another use”, “Eliminate”,
“Reverse”) to produce solutions.
• Bodystorming – role-playing in scenarios/customer-journey steps to find
solutions.
• Analogies – drawing comparisons to communicate ideas better.
• Provocation – an extreme lateral-thinking technique to challenge
established beliefs and explore paths beyond.
• Movement – a “what if?” approach to overcoming obstacles in ideation and
finding themes/trends/attributes towards reliable solutions.
• Cheatstorm – using previously ideated material as stimuli.
 • Crowdstorming – target audiences generate and validate ideas through
feedback (e.g., social media) to provide valuable solution insights.
• Creative Pause – taking time to pull back from obstacles.
• If you get stuck, you have fallbacks: e.g., “breaking the law” (listing
constraints to see if you can overcome them), “stealing” ideas (emulating
applicable concepts from other industries), inverting the problem and
laddering (moving problems between the abstract and the concrete)

4. Prototype: This is an experimental phase, and the aim is to identify the best
possible solution for each of the problems identified during the first three
stages. The solutions are implemented within the prototypes, and, one by one,
they are investigated and either accepted, improved and re-examined, or
rejected on the basis of the users’ experiences. By the end of this stage, the
design team will have a better idea of the constraints inherent to the product
and the problems that are present and have a clearer view of how real users
would behave, think, and feel when interacting with the end product.

5. Test: This is the final stage of the 5 stage-model, but in an iterative process,
the results generated during the testing phase are often used to redefine one
or more problems and inform the understanding of the users, the conditions
of use, how people think, behave, and feel, and to empathize. Even during this
phase, alterations and refinements are made in order to rule out problem
solutions and derive as deep an understanding of the product and its users as
possible.

B. Business Model Canvas

This team assignment is aimed at helping each team vet their best idea, through the
Business Model Canvas and other business strategy concepts discussed in class.

The highest grades will be awarded to those reports that are professional, free of
errors, full of consistent effort, and meaningful data.

Business Model Canvas is available here: http://canvanizer.com/new/business-

model-canvas You may use their online tool to create a business model canvas for
your project.

C. Instructions

The presentation should, at a minimum, cover these topics:

1. Put your names and student IDs in the upper right-hand corner. Below that,
write down your program/section.
2. A title that includes your best rendering of the product concept.
3. An introduction that introduces the product and overviews the product
opportunity including the need that the product addresses. Briefly define what
you perceive as 'value' for your project
 4. An overview of the market feasibility that includes a description of the target
market that includes credible numbers on size of the market, credible evidence
that customers in the target market want the product, and an analysis of the
competition.
5. A description of the product technology. Briefly list the most important
capabilities (how do they create 'value?) for the company.
6. Questions:
a. What is the source of the competitive advantage of the project?
b. Where does the business sit in the life-cycle and what are the issues to
address in this phase?
c. What are the risks associated with the project (probability and
importance)?
7. A Business Model Canvas for your project:
• Present a tight synopsis of the value proposition for your project, and your
business plan, hitting, at a top level, all of the buckets that comprise an
effective plan.
• Clearly state who the product is for (customer segment), what customer
need is being met or customer problem is being solved by your product,
and why that need or problem is important (value proposition), what is
revenue stream the product will generate (revenue stream), what is the
cost-of-goods-sold or other costs associated with the product (cost
structure).
• Conclude with a statement on whether the team believes this is a viable
business opportunity.

Bonus: using the models discussed during class will not only establish a solid
framework of understanding but also transfer your knowledge to new situations and
help you finalize your project. In particular, I’d like to see the following discussions,
choose the most relevant ones for your project:
• Sources of competitive advantage
• Value chain differentiation
• Porter’s 5 forces identification
• Life-cycle and relevant strategies
• Business strategy: [Business Model]: resources and capabilities, [Output]:
products and services, [Value proposition], [Nature of customers]:
segmentation
• Product leadership / Operational excellence/ Customer intimacy
• Features, Advantages, Benefits (FAB) analysis
• SWOT analysis

Your final grade will be positively affected.

Exemple of a B.M. group : When you go to the supermarket. You write a list of all things you want on your phone
and in a supermarket your phone help you to know where the food is. you use your phone as the scanner and
you take the product by yourself. You can skip the cashier. Delhaize like this because they want to eliminate the
cashier.
When done, print a copy of the assignment as a .pdf file with the following file name:

[yourteamreference_BMC].pdf

and upload it to eCampus (please, one copy per group!) by the due date. Past-due,
partially complete or in-progress submissions will not be graded.

D. Grading

Judging of the Business Model is in three major parts:

1. The first overall area is the real-life viability of the idea and the ability to
communicate it to others. To be successful, it is important to follow a logical
and sound process of searching and discovering an optimal business model.
However, doing all the right steps might not be enough if the product/service
is not viable in the end. This first part is much more subjective based on the
judge’s expertise and experience.

2. The second is whether the team of students has put due diligence and effort
into following the steps of the method using the Business Model canvas tool.
While there is a quality aspect, the second part is much more objective in its
judging, that is, the team of students either did or did not due the required
steps of the business model process.

3. The third part concerns the quality of answers to the questions stated above,
under 6.a.
SCORE
Part I: In the Judges’ Expert Opinion
Ability to communicate: Did the team present the project well? Were they
/10
clear? Did they present a logical flow?
Real Life: Based on the persuasiveness of the evidence presented and own
/10
real-life experience, how viable is this product or service?

Part II: Due Diligence / Appropriate Effort by Team

Use of Business Model Canvas Process:
Was there evidence that the business model canvas was used to identify and
/10
track assumptions?
Were assumptions clearly stated? /10
Were high priority or crucial assumptions identified, explained and acted on
/10
first (the ones most likely to kill the idea)?

Part III: Answers to questions

See above /10

GRAND TOTAL __________/60