Instant Business Plan

This exercise was part of my SMARTUP Masters program. The program started with three intensive weeks at Milano-Bicocca University where we started with basics of design thinking. In one workshop, we initiated a business idea around beauty services, to which we later built an instant business plan.

Our group implemented this exercise as webinar using Padlet for brainstorming help as workshop participants were sitting in three countries. The instant business plan divided into four topics. When making this one-hour workshop happen, we shared our time as requested:

Customers, 15 minutes:

• Elevator pitch

• We make money by...

• Our customers are...

• We will acquire first customers by...

• The market size is...

  
  

Competition, 15minutes:

• Our competition includes...

• But our sustainable competitive advantage will be...
  

Team, 10 minutes:

• Team

  
  

Key Risks/Next Steps, 15 minutes:

• Our key risks are...

• In order to succeed we need to...

• Our next steps are...

Our platform business idea was named as "Beauty Pocket". For each part of the plan we had specific tasks during which we did several mind maps. The end result of our group assignment looked as follows.

Our group spent around hour and a half to this workshop. I recommend this method for drafting initial business ideas. Best to do face-to-face, but if you decide making it in virtual team, make sure to use some good virtual brainstorming tools.