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Where appropriate you shall introduce a company, give company data or description and site the communication issue or problem or any communication phenomenon according to the attached document; but also remember; 6203 Strategic Marketing and Innovation Assessment Strategy 1. Market Opportunity Assessment 30\% 2. Elevator Pitch Presentation 20\% 3. Commercialization Marketing Plan 50\% a. Group report: 30\% b. Individual evaluations: 20\% Initial Submission: Market Opportunity Assessment (MOA) Individual proposal submission 30\% contribution to assessment The Initial Assignment To start the innovation project, students will learn how to tell the difference between a good idea in a casual conversation and a great scalable business opportunity. In this exercise, you will identify and define a market opportunity and present the opportunity in a report. Each student will create a ‘market opportunity assessment’ proposal in which you will analyse and describe your innovation opportunity. Proposals will be posted on the class website and open to ‘review’ among our fellow innovation funding students. Venture capital will be allocated among proposals reflecting market confidence in the innovation idea. This project is not intended to be a business plan for an innovation idea, but rather an investigation of the feasibility of an idea and viability of commercializing it. As such, your project should reflect an understanding of the core concepts that you have been taught in this course. It should also reflect a concerted analysis on your part to investigate the idea proposed. Key Deliverables You should identify an innovative business venture (new business, product or service) opportunity from the FastCompany innovation website and perform an initial analysis to understand whether, why and how your opportunity can be turned into a scalable business. In your written analysis, you should tell the story of your proposed innovation by addressing as much of the following as possible and appropriate to your specific innovation concept: Concept and Vision. Where did your idea come from (e.g., a new technology, another market)? Explain what the market opportunity is and what your solution might be. What makes your solution particularly compelling? How does it make meaning and the world a better place? Do you have personal experiences with this market? Is there existing intellectual property that you must license or new intellectual property you must develop in order to pursue this opportunity? Has anyone tried something like this before? If so, why did they fail or succeed, and why is the opportunity still attractive? Market Analysis. What industry or sector of the economy are you addressing? Why is this market attractive? What segment of the overall market are you pursuing? What market research data can be gathered to describe this market need? What are the total industry or category sales over the past three years? What is the anticipated growth for this industry? If this is a new market, what is the best analogous market data that illustrates the opportunity? Project the potential market size and growth for your opportunity. Customers and Customer Development. This is extremely important. You need to have a clear idea of who your target customer is. The only way for you to be able to do this is to get out of the building and speak with your potential customers. You will need to answer questions such as: What does the customer need? Why does the customer need it? What is the customer using today? What is the customer willing to pay for your solution? Why? How will you reach this customer? You should include both primary (or first-hand) research and secondary research, emphasizing primary over secondary. Competition and Positioning. Who else serves this customer need? Who might attempt to serve this market in the future? What advantages and weaknesses do these competitors and would-be competitors have? What share of the market do specific competitors serve? Are the major competitors sales growing, declining, or steady? What are the barriers to entry for you? What are the barriers to entry for additional competitors? How could partners and allies best help you overcome competition from established enterprises or other start-ups? Business Model and Go-to-Market Philosophy. Now that you have discovered an opportunity and talked to potential customers, how will you turn it into a viability business opportunity? How will you make money and when do you expect your innovation to be profitable? What is the major risk to address right away (e.g., market or technical)? In other words, which hypothesis regarding product or market strategies needs to be tested right away? The list above has no implied order. Some innovation champions start with a well-defined concept and then try to identify a market for their idea; others start by studying a market and then stumble upon an idea. Also, please keep in mind that the specific data and information you provide will vary according to the type of opportunity you choose to analyse and the nature of organization sponsoring it. I recommend five basic steps in the process of analysing an opportunity: Identify potential opportunities. Combine your own personal experiences and creativity with external forecasts and trend analysis. How is the world changing with respect to new technologies? What is the impact of globalization on current solutions? What new requirements will those changes produce? Recent media articles and blogs on trends are often a good place to start. Define your purpose and objectives. Identify your most promising opportunity, being careful to discriminate between an interesting technological idea and a viable market opportunity. Prepare an outline which will help you to determine what types of data and information you need to demonstrate the attractiveness of your chosen opportunity. Gather data from primary sources. It is crucial for you to obtain data from primary sources. Potential champions will place more trust in well conducted primary research than in stacks of data from secondary sources. There is simply no substitute for talking to potential customers from the target market in order to validate the opportunity you have identified. Consequently, we prefer that you spend time gathering data from primary, not just secondary, sources. Gather data from secondary sources. Countless secondary sources exist on the web and in the HCT’s various library resources. Try not to get too bogged down in financial and accounting data. Analyse and interpret the results. Persuasively summarize your results. A key success factor for a successful project is the depth of your analysis and what you learned from it. If after careful research you have determined that your business idea is not as promising as you originally thought, it is totally acceptable to present a MOA that describes why your idea may make sense now in the short term but not necessarily be the next big thing. An honest, rigorous analysis of an idea that does not survive further scrutiny is preferable to either (a) a half-baked presentation of an idea you are unsure of, or (b) an enthusiastic job of over selling for your current idea, even though you know it is problematic. Proposal submissions should be ‘clear and concise’ … ‘purposeful and persuasive’. Be sure to sell the story with conviction. Midterm Presentation: The Elevator Pitch Individual presentation and proposal 20\% contribution to assessment This is the ‘elevator pitch’. With the support of five PowerPoint slides, each entrepreneur will pitch their venture to the class. Entrepreneurs will have 10 minutes to give the pitch, followed by 5 minutes of Q&A. Each Chief Innovation Officer / venture capitalist (peers) will then score each of the other pitches. The criteria will be according to the clarity of the concept pitch, its innovativeness and its hypothetical feasibility for success. The class sessions will help you get started in writing your proposal and positioning statement. Complete Geoff Moores two-sentence positioning template for your innovative product or service concept. The template is: Sentence #1 For (target customer) who (statement of the need or opportunity), the (product/service name) is a (product/service category) that (statement of benefit). Sentence #2 Unlike (primary competitive alternative), our product (statement of primary differentiation). To aid your presentation, create 5 PowerPoint slides: • The opening slide should define the core concept and key deliverables. • One slide should ‘bring to life’ your positioning statement as above. • A third slide should summarize the value proposition for your target customers. • A fourth slide should highlight the sustainable competitive advantage your venture possesses in developing and delivering this innovative proposition. • The last slide should define how this concept adds value to the firm. Remember … PowerPoint slides are an aid to presentation; not the focus. Use visual aids to support your presentation rather than drive it. Final Project: Innovation Commercialization Marketing Plan Group … 3 or 4 members 50\% overall contribution to assessment (30\% group and 20\% individual) The final project is a strategic marketing plan for an innovation idea. This group project gives you an opportunity to test and advance your ability to understand and analyse marketing situations, identify an opportunity, design a marketing strategy and implementation plan. It requires a good grasp of marketing concepts, strong decision-making and team-work skills. Groups should form in order to combine key strengths in commercializing a new innovation initiative; i.e. strategy formulation, execution detail and financial viability. Group members should evaluate the viability of individual MOA proposals amongst the group and run with the most promising concept for development. While the marketing process and specific responsibilities of a marketing manager vary across industries and firms, developing a strategic marketing plan involves three main activities: 1. analysis of market situation; 2. marketing strategy formulation; 3. implementing strategy through marketing mix. The course will cover all three areas and will equip you with the necessary concepts and skills. Each plan will be prepared and presented by a group of students. Each team should identify an existing opportunity (an unfulfilled need, perhaps) in the market, propose an innovative commercial initiative (product, service or combination of the two) that can address it, and design strategy and related tactics for launching it. In effect, the project focuses on a commercial launch plan for this innovation opportunity. Characteristics of a sound marketing plan include:  Should provide a strategy for accomplishing the company mission and goal.  It should be based on facts and valid assumptions.  An appropriate organization must be described to implement the plan.  It should provide continuity so that each annual plan can build upon it.  It should be simple and short.  The success of the plan may depend on flexibility.  It should specify performance criteria that will be monitored and controlled. Key steps in preparing the marketing plan include: 1. Define the business situation which analyses past and present business achievements of the new innovation initiative. 2. Define the target market, opportunities and threats. A target market is a specific group of potential customers toward which the venture aims its marketing plan. 3. Market segmentation is the process of dividing a market into definable and measurable groups for purposes of targeting marketing strategy. 4. Considering strength and weaknesses in the target market. 5. Establish goals and objectives to measure the level of performance desired by the new venture. Be sure to define deliverable action programs:  Specific activities to meet relevant organizational goals related to this innovative initiative.  Create a description of the new product or service in the context of commercializing the innovation.  Monetizing the opportunity (revenue) will need to consider costs, margins or mark-ups, and competition.  Distribution options that make the product convenient to the customer. The written plan for your final project is due soon after the last class meeting. The final project should be a maximum of 15 pages, including any charts, graphs, and figures. The plans will be evaluated according to the following criteria: 1. The quality of the analysis — were the right questions asked? 2. The feasibility of conclusions or recommendations — do they follow from the analysis? 3. Evidence of mastery of the frameworks, concepts, and methods developed in the course. 4. The effectiveness (logic and persuasion) of the written presentation of the report. In total, the exercise consists of two aspects: 1. Group submission of the commercialization plan for the selected innovation business initiative. 2. Individual evaluations of ‘competing’ commercialization plans. The structure of these elements follows this format … Final projects 1. Your audience: CIO (Chief Innovation Officer) or BOD (Board of Directors) 2. Your task: persuade to support your proposal for commercialization development 3. Your challenge: convince with conviction 4. Your result … 30\% … group evaluation by your ‘boss’ (me) as CIO 10\% … group rating formula evaluated by peers 10\% … individual evaluation of your assessments by me 30\% group evaluation The plans will be evaluated according to the following criteria: 1. The quality of the analysis — were the right questions asked? 2. The feasibility of conclusions or recommendations — do they follow from the analysis? 3. Evidence of mastery of the frameworks, concepts, and methods developed in the course. 4. The effectiveness (logic and persuasion) of the written presentation of the report. 10\% group evaluations Each project proposal will be posted on the class website. Your peers are CIO’s (Chief Innovation Officers). Each individual evaluation of every project will be summed up and evaluated on the basis of feedback about the proposal. 10\% individual evaluation of proposals Part of being a good manager is the ability to evaluate ideas and individuals. Your ratings and explanation of your views on each proposal will reflect upon your ability to critically assess innovative ideas. I (CEO of course) will then evaluate your evaluations of proposals … basically assessing your performance as CIO! Key criteria and characteristics … 1. The problem/opportunity is clearly communicated, as is the need for a better solution compared to competing products/services. 2. The strategy presented seems clear and has obvious benefits over competing options. 3. I think there are an attractive market and a sufficient profit opportunity. 4. The claims are supported by the right amount of details, facts and figures. 5. I’m convinced that the rationale of this report is sound.