|Assessment Type||Assessment length / details||Proportion|
|Semester Assessment||Written proposal for new business venture (500 words).||5%|
|Semester Assessment||Business plan (2,000 words).||35%|
|Semester Exam||2 Hours||60%|
|Supplementary Assessment||Written proposal for new business venture - 500 words. (Students must take elements of assessment equivalent to those that led to failure of the module.)||5%|
|Supplementary Assessment||Business plan - 2,000 words. (Students must take elements of assessment equivalent to those that led to failure of the module.)||35%|
|Supplementary Exam||2 Hours (Students must take elements of assessment equivalent to those that led to failure of the module.)||60%|
On successful completion of this module students should be able to:
1. Assess the importance of entrepreneurship and new venture creation in the wider economy, especially their role in creating employment and innovation.
2. Discuss the main problems associated with establishing and running a new venture in terms of employee relations, marketing and financial control.
3. Identify the causes and extent of small business failure.
4. Plan for a new business start-up and be aware of government and other incentives to assist such ventures.
5. Develop personal skills including team building and presentation skills.
This module examines theoretical and practical elements of entrepreneurship, and establishing and running a new venture. There is coverage of the economic, social and psychological approaches to the theory of entrepreneurship, and the role of the entrepreneur in developing innovation. The module examines the identification of new business opportunities, starting, managing and marketing a new venture, writing a business plan, and raising finance.
• Theories of entrepreneurship, motivations towards the formation of a small business, research on their practical implications, female and minority entrepreneurship.
• The economic context of the small business, the small firm in the economy, government policy towards small businesses, creating an enterprise culture, current policy.
• Different forms of businesses, franchising, the franchisor- franchisee relationship, service delivery system, evaluating a franchise opportunity, expanding through franchising.
• Financing the new venture. Sources of finance for small firms, bootstrapping, bank loans and overdrafts, leasing and hire purchase, venture capital and business angels.
• Growing a small firm. Stages of growth, management of growth, managing people, the entrepreneur at different stages, management training, building a management team.
• Marketing in the new venture, entrepreneurial approach to marketing, problems of marketing in a small firms, e-business, selling products and services online.
• Challenges and issues facing new ventures. The reasons why small firms fail including insufficient sales and poor financial management, lack of planning, recovery strategies, financial management.
• Family firms. The importance of family firms, management issues, ownership and legal issues, succession, selling the family business, social enterprise.
• Planning for the future, harvesting strategies, public floatation, sale, management succession, portfolio and habitual entrepreneurs, leadership and ethics
|Skills Type||Skills details|
|Application of Number||Prepare financial projections for the business plan including ratios and breakeven etc.|
|Communication||Develop confidence in and clarity of oral communication via tutorial participation and project team group discussions, develop clarity and focus of written communication via group project production and presentation, develop and use appropriately subject-specific vocabulary in oral and written communication.|
|Improving own Learning and Performance||Devise and apply self-learning strategies, review and monitor overall performance, be aware of time management.|
|Information Technology||Use a variety of electronic web- and library- based resources to review available information and retrieve relevant information, use various software packages for the production of the group project report (excel, text, numerical tables and analysis, graphics).|
|Personal Development and Career planning||Develop skills in financial analysis and decision making, identify possible entrepreneurial opportunities, focusing on the ability to think creatively and innovatively.|
|Problem solving||Identify the precise problem to be solved, assess which data are pertinent to the problem, recognize that alternative solution methods might be available, select and apply appropriate methods for solving the problem, assess the reasonableness of problem solutions and interpret those solutions.|
|Research skills||Identify which information sources are available to facilitate module study (understanding, wider reading), to provide information to facilitate the analysis of business performance and prospects, to provide raw input to the production of the group project, select the most pertinent information for retrieval, retrieve information, re-assess the pertinence and assess the credibility of retrieved information, properly reference/attribute information sources.|
|Subject Specific Skills||Prepare a business plan including market research and financial forecasts, understand.|
|Team work||Develop experience of team work and develop team working skills via group project.|
This module is at CQFW Level 5