Project Description

As an opportunity to practice your presentation skills and receive feedback from interested parties, you will be presenting your working business plans (business model) to an audience. You will have a total of 20 minutes to present your business. Essentially, you will be presenting to your classmates as if they were potential supporters or investors--what type of investor (e.g. Angel, VC, bank, etc.) all depends on your business model. Your ultimate purpose of this presentation is to secure funding for your business idea. To be clear, this presentation should endeavor to gain interest in your business, not your business plan. Thus, you are not presenting in a "here is what we did for our business plan" fashion. Rather, you should present your business and all of its merits, asking for financial support to get you off the ground (which will, ultimately, lead to profit for all involved parties).

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

While the only deliverable for this project is the actual presentation itself, there are some parameters required as follows:

Media Types:

Your business plan pitch should take advantage of “typical” visual media available to entrepreneurs and business owners. How you choose to present your business plan and concept is, in the end, up to you. But, you are required to use some form of visual assistance, including:

• PowerPoint
• Overheads
• Poster(s) and Easel
• Others

Further, you are required to have handouts of some sort for all of your audience members. Your handout should supplement--not be a copy of--your presentation content. This should be your best work—which means it should be in the format you would be proud to present to potential funders.

Participation:

Each member of the business plan team is required to participate in the Business Plan Presentation. Completely equal participation is, of course, not necessary (or even quantifiable), but each member should have a distinct task during the presentation. Essentially, it should not be obvious that one person or another did more work—either on the business plan, or on the presentation. Your audience should hardly be aware of the transition from one presenter to another. Or one slide to another, for that matter. Practice.

Time:

In alignment with business plan competitions across the nation, your Business Plan Presentation will be no longer than 20 minutes, with a 5-10 minute Question & Answer session to immediately follow. Being this short, it is extremely important that you make decisions about what you will include, what you will exclude, how you will position yourselves rhetorically, how you will present the material (e.g. charts and graphs?), and how you will grab and maintain your audience’s attention. You will need to practice to ensure that you say what you want, how you want in the 20-minute time constraint. Practice more than once.

Professional ethos:

It is my expectation that you will conduct yourselves with utmost professionalism. Your professional ethos, along with that of this class, the program, and Purdue University all rests on how the decisions your groups make regarding professionalism. Although the following is not all inclusive, these are some aspects of professional ethos you might consider:

• Attire
• Polish of Presentation
• Word Choice (level of formality)
• Presentation Materials
• Body Language
• Self Introductions
• Question and Answer Session
• Others

Grading for Business (Plan) Presentation

• 40% - Content
• 15% - Presentation Makeup
• 10% - Business Plan Presentation Handout (presentation aid)
• 15% - Ranking and ethos
• 20% - Media Assistance