Project Description

Introduction
On the heels of your recently-completed and presented Business Plans, you will pitch your business to your audience.  In a similar fashion to the Business Idea Pitch, what and how you choose to present is completely up to you.  In this class, you have had opportunities to develop and practice your rhetorical skills (including your presentation skills) and have developed a comprehensive Business Plan containing all of the information necessary for a solid Elevator Pitch. Project 6, then, is designed to put those skills and ideas to the test--to allow you to present your ideas in a succinct, cogent, and engaging manner.

Project Summary
For this individual project, you are being asked to prepare and present an Elevator Pitch for your group's unique idea for a business, product, or service. You will pitch to the entire class, including your instructor, and the audience will rank the pitches from one to eleven (not ranking themselves). Your pitches will also be video-taped and posted to the site, so that you can watch them, analyze them, and improve on them for future pitches. In the end, the results of the competition will have a bearing on the grade of this individual project. Make no mistake, this is a competition, and the stakes are high, as explicated below. This will be a fun, educational, and useful near-culmination of your collaborative efforts this semester.

Project Goals

Writing in Context

• writing for a range of defined audiences and stakeholders;
• negotiating the ethical dimensions of workplace and/or business communication;
• representing one's business goals and innovative ideas persuasively, in written and oral forms.

Project Management

• Understand, develop and deploy various strategies for planning, researching, drafting, revising, and editing the important and necessary documents of entrepreneurship, including business plans, marketing materials, white papers, resumes, trademark applications, and grant proposals, both individually and collaboratively
• Select and use appropriate technologies that both effectively and ethically address professional situations and audiences.
• Build professional ethos through documentation and accountability.

Document Design
Make rhetorical design decisions about workplace documents commonly used by entrepreneurs, including

• understanding and adapting to genre conventions and audience expectations;

understanding and implementing design principles of format and layout;

• interpreting and arguing with design;
• drafting, researching, testing, and revising visual designs and information architecture.

Teamwork
Learn and apply strategies for successful teamwork and collaboration, such as

• working online with colleagues;
• determining individual and group roles and responsibilities;
• managing team conflicts constructively;
• responding constructively to peers' work
• soliciting and using peer feedback effectively;
• achieving team and business goals.

Research
Understand and use various research methods to produce professional documents, including

• analyzing professional contexts;
• locating, evaluating, and using print and online information selectively for particular audiences and purposes;
• triangulating sources of evidence;
• selecting appropriate primary research methods, such as interviews, observations, focus groups, and surveys to collect data;
• working ethically with research participants.

Technology
Use and evaluate the writing technologies frequently used in the workplace and for entrepreneurship, such as emailing, instant messaging, image editing, video editing, presentation design and delivery, HTML editing, Web browsing, content management, and desktop publishing technologies.

Deliverables

Your Individual Elevator Pitch
1. May be in any format you choose.
2. Less than (up to) two minutes.
3. Some areas of discussion include:

• Your product or service;
• Your market and its size;
• How you plan to make money;
• How much money you will make;
• How much money you require at start up/what you are asking for from you investors;
• Your leadership team;
• Your competition;
• Your competitive advantage.

Stakes of Elevator Pitch Competition
1. Rank 1-16 of all presenters.
2. Ranking will be worth 25% of your individual grade on this project.
3. Your instructor will evaluate your pitch and render a grade equalling 75%.

Rules of Elevator Pitch Competition
1. All aspiring entrepreneurs (class members) must present
2. Must rank all presenters
3. Cannot vote for yourself
4. Selected at random on the day of the Pitch
5. In the spirit of a true Elevator pitch, you may not use any notes when pitching. Practice!

Grading for Business Idea Pitch

This project is worth a total of 5% of your total course grade. For all students, the pitches will be graded on 1) the content of the pitch, 2) how well the picth is put together and organized, 3) how thorough and convincing the presentation is (e.g. would we invest the amount of money asked for), 4) and how professionally the information is pitched.

So, at its heart, this project is a competition and a chance to show your audience how you interpret your business idea, what you think is important for them to know in 2 minutes, and how rhetorically-sophisticated you can be while pitching. For Project 6, you are competing, in part, for your grade on the project. Also, this is your last opportunity in the class to illustrate some of your skills as a future business owner and entrepreneur. How well did you research, organize information, utilize your resources, and present your ideas? Those that do the aforementioned the best are destined to garner the best ranking.