Our goal today is to think through the beginnings of a strategic plan for a new business.  A strategic plan describes the proposed business in very general terms.  The next step is to develop a detailed business plan specifying the detailed steps to be taken.  This outline is adapted from Planware.com, which provides a detailed model for writing business plans.

For our exercise, we will work on an idea for a business to market electronic paper.  We are assuming that the technology will be available, our task is to figure out how to use it.  What application will we develop?  How much of it can we sell and to whom?  We start with this very general idea - marketing electronic paper - and develop it into a detailed plan of operations for which we can seek funding.  This exercise is designed to begin the process, developing a full business plan would take much more time.

Product:  The first step is to describe the product.  What is it we will be selling?  To whom?
 
 

Vision:  The next step is to develop a realistic Vision for the business. This should be presented as a pen picture of the business in three or more years time in terms of its likely physical appearance, size, activities etc. Answer the question: "if someone from Mars visited the business, what would they see or sense?"
 
 
 
 
 

Mission Statement:  The nature of a business is often expressed in terms of its Mission Statement which indicates the purposes of the business, for example, "to design, develop, manufacture and market specific product lines for sale on the basis of certain features to meet the identified needs of specified customer groups via certain distribution channels in particular geographic areas". A statement along these lines indicates what the business is about and is infinitely clearer than saying, for instance, "we're in electronics"
 
 
 
 
 
 

Objectives:  The third key element is to explicitly state the business's Objectives in terms of the results it needs/wants to achieve in the medium/long term. Aside from presumably indicating a necessity to achieve regular profits (expressed as return on shareholders' funds), objectives should relate to the expectations and requirements of all the major stakeholders, including employees, and should reflect the underlying reasons for running the business.  Over the next three years, what do we expect to accomplish?  How much money will we have raised?  How many employees will we have?  Will we have a product, or will we still be planning?  How many units would we expect to sell?  What indicators of success will we have?