Reference no: EM131526168
Assignment: Project Guidelines
In this course, you begin the task of identifying a business idea that you will fully develop throughout your MBA journey. It can be a product, service, or other concept for an existing company environment, or a totally new entrepreneurial venture. You will first choose the market domain for your idea, such as transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, or the service industry, for example. This selected domain will be your area of focus throughout the MBA program.
Overview
Business environments are constantly changing for many reasons: competition in the marketplace, new technology, and political upheavals, for example. A prudent business manager will need to be able to first recognize and then react to these changes to ensure a company's survival and profitability. To do this, the manager will evaluate both the internal and external factors that can either inhibit or enable a company's assets and capabilities to align with market opportunities.
For this project, you will choose a market domain such as transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, or the service industry. This selected domain will be your area of focus throughout the MBA program. You will research the business environment of this domain, analyzing the trends and internal and external factors that affect businesses within this domain. Through this analysis, you will gain an appreciation of the business environment from a holistic perspective in order to foster innovation and maximize profit potential.
This assessment addresses the following course outcomes:
? Analyze inhibiting and enabling factors in current and historical business environments for their impact on opportunities for innovation and change
? Assess internal organizational assets and capabilities for determining competitive readiness and weaknesses in current business environments
? Analyze external factors of business environments for their impact on competitive readiness and internal organizational assets
? Assess intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial opportunities in the global marketplace for their viability based on organizational assets and the business environment
? Evaluate trends in the current global business environment for developing business opportunities and improving sustainable business operations
Prompt
Your business environmental analysis should answer the following prompt: Select a market domain such as transportation, healthcare, manufacturing, or the service industry. This selected domain will be your area of focus throughout the MBA program, although you will be able to change if you need to. Begin by evaluating the business environment of the market domain. Then, select a specific company within the market domain. The company you select should be a company where you can envision intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial opportunities, as you will identify and assess these opportunities in this project. Finally, evaluate the trends relevant to the business environment of your company and market domain.
Specifically, the following critical elements must be addressed:
I. Market Domain: In this section, you will evaluate the current business environment of your selected market domain. Specifically, you should include the following:
A. Historical Significance: Analyze historically significant pivot points or factors that led to dramatic changes and innovation in the business environment of your selected market domain.
B. Factors: Analyze the factors that contributed to the obsolescence or dissolution of notable companies in your selected market domain in the recent past. Make sure to discuss both inhibiting and enabling factors in your analysis.
C. Impact of Factors: Assess the impact of the factors you analyzed on opportunities for change and innovation in the business environment of your selected market domain.
II. Competitive Readiness: In this section, you will select a company within your market domain and then evaluate internal and external factors pertaining to the company's competitive readiness. Specifically, you should include the following:
A. Internal Factors
1. SWOT Analysis: Complete a SWOT analysis on the internal factors that affect the company's readiness to compete. What are the strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats faced by the company relative to the competitive market?
2. Prioritized List: Based on the SWOT analysis, create a prioritized list of strengths to exploit and weaknesses to mitigate. Each item in your list should have supporting rationale.
3. Readiness: Based on internal factors, evaluate the company's readiness to compete in the business environment of the market domain.
Support your evaluation with information from your market domain evaluation and SWOT analysis.
B. External Factors
1. PEST Analysis: Complete a PEST analysis on the external factors that affect the company's readiness to compete. What are the political, economic, social, and technological factors that affect the company?
2. Prioritized List: Based on the PEST analysis, create a prioritized list of strengths to exploit and weaknesses to mitigate. Each item in your list should have supporting rationale.
3. Readiness: Based on external factors, evaluate the company's readiness to compete in the business environment of the market domain.
Support your evaluation with information from your market domain evaluation and PEST analysis.
III. Opportunities and Trends: In this section, you will assess intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial opportunities in the company you selected. You will then evaluate trends in the global business environment for their impact on the opportunities you identified. Specifically, you should include the following:
A. Intrapreneurial Opportunities: Develop a list of intrapreneurial opportunities within your selected company. Each opportunity in your list should have supporting rationale based on your market domain evaluation and SWOT analysis.
B. Intrapreneurial Assessment: Select one intrapreneurial opportunity from your list to assess. How viable is the opportunity? Your response should be supported with evidence from your market domain evaluation and SWOT analysis.
C. Entrepreneurial Opportunities: Develop a list of entrepreneurial opportunities outside the confines of the company you selected. Each opportunity in your list should have supporting rationale based on your market domain evaluation and PEST analysis.
D. Entrepreneurial Assessment: Select one entrepreneurial opportunity from your list to assess. How viable is the opportunity? Your response should be supported with evidence from your market domain evaluation and PEST analysis.
E. Trends: Evaluate key trends affecting the global business environment of your selected market domain. These could be geographic, political, or societal trends, or they could be trends specific to your market domain.
F. Impact on Opportunities: Determine how these trends will impact the development of your selected intrapreneurial and entrepreneurial opportunities.
G. Impact on Sustainability: Determine how these trends will affect the sustainability of your selected company. Which trends could be used to improve sustainable business operations?
Milestones
Milestone One: Market Domain Overview
In Module Two, you will create an overview of your chosen market domain. This overview will be a survey of the domain holistically in order to describe the marketplace of your chosen market domain and the factors contributing to its development. For example, if you chose the transportation industry and focused on ground transposition, you would discuss the development of the rail or interstate highway systems, the concept of intermodal transportation, deregulation, environment laws, and so forth. You will describe the impact on the marketplace of these new developments and leadership's response.
Milestone Two: SWOT Analysis
In Module Four, you will complete a SWOT analysis of the company you have decided to base your work on, whether it is a fictional or a real-world company. This analysis will be written viewing the company from the inside to the outside. You will submit an organizational assessment of your company within the chosen market domain. This assessment will determine the relative competitiveness of the company and demonstrate technical knowledge of assessment tools and techniques. This assessment will consider the total picture of the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats in relation to the current market environment. This assessment should consider key aspects of the company, including its product/service mix, pricing, location, technology, marketing, and human, financial, and information resources. Corporate ethics should be considered when completing the SWOT, whether a strength or a weakness. Discuss the direction of movement or trending of each of the four quadrants. Identify and elaborate on at least four each of the company's strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.
Milestone Three: PEST Analysis
In Module Six, you will submit an environmental scan of the company within the chosen market domain using the PEST format. This analysis will be written viewing the company from the outside to the inside. This assessment will consider the knowledge gained from the SWOT analysis generated in Milestone Two and assess the company's competitive readiness from external dimensions, extending to the global marketplace. The scan will include the external political, economic/financial, sociopolitical, and technological trends for a given market environment and a potential market. The information gathered from this scan will assist in the identification of the most lucrative market niche in which to formulate an actual business development strategy in Milestone Four.
Milestone Four: Intrapreneurial and Entrepreneurial Opportunities
In Module Eight, you will submit the last portion of your draft business development plan for your company, covering the specific opportunity assessment along with the trends and discussion on sustainability. This plan will be based on the results of Milestones One and Two in that it will consider that past forces of market change and the current capabilities and limitations of the company. This plan will align the company's efforts to exploiting intrapreneurial opportunities as well as entrepreneurial opportunities, depending on the company's capabilities. The plan should reflect consideration of potential future impacts on these plans such as changes in the economy, market position, technology innovation, or sociopolitical factors.