50DE Creativity assignment year 0

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Business Plan and Negotiations with Potential Investors

This part takes into consideration your hotel’s strategy. You have done some research about the city of Amstelburg and selected the strategy for your hotel, which gives the input for your decisions regarding your unique value propositions, their marketing channels and distribution channels.

Your hotel must have a USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and a business plan and you must be able to pitch it. The goal of the pitch is to introduce and explain the Value Proposition (VP) of your business model and the functioning of the whole model. The Customer Segment is your choice. The pitch is aimed at the owners and/or potential investors. In any case you need to explain your VP thoroughly and the rest of the Business Model as well: how is the VP brought to life and delivered to the Customer Segment. You have a limited amount to spend in order to bring your Value Proposition to life.

Goal

Through negotiating your main goal is to win investors for your hotel and secure the funding necessary to carry out your business plan.

Tasks, deliverable

The product/service of a company is nowadays generally referred to as Value Proposition (VP). The more unique it is, the more likely you will acquire a substantial market share of your customer segment. Develop a strategy for your hotel in a competitive business environment (name, logo, division of team members, marketing strategy, etc.). Make reference to the real location we visited today through a city tour. Include aspects such as the art, culture, history, identity, economy and society in your considerations. For your unique product or service, you most probably need some sort of investment. You might need to build something, outsource some services or hire people with special skills. We recommend Business Model Canvas to get an overview of the most important key factors of your business model.. Build your VP on the paper, visualize it and fit it in your business model.

The negotiation is made tougher by the time window. You only have 10 minutes to reach a deal. If the deal is not reached within the given time, the team loses some valuable points.

Please hand in 2 – 3 pages (including figures) addressing the following questions and tasks:

1. What are the three most notable characteristics of the city and its history? How do these influence your business plan and strategy?
2. Please describe your USP (Unique Selling Proposition) and business plan.
3. Please describe your strategy for the meeting with the investors.
4. After the negotiation: Which parts worked and which did not? Why?

Assessed elements

• The Pitch: The pitch must show your USP (aka VP), its ball-park budget numbers and its integration into the business model. You have only 10 minutes time!
• The written assignment: Have all questions and tasks been addressed in a professional way? Are the arguments convincing? Did you critically reflect on your performance?

Further Instructions and Recommendations

• Use suitable literature or websites to analyse the background, set objectives, and plan the budget for bringing your value proposition to life. Give all sources. Write in a concrete and serious way, as to show knowledge on the subject.
  
  
• Find materials and resources on the basic structures and steps for negotiating. Use suitable literature or websites. Some hints for structure:

1. Goals
2. Summary of how you got “there” (to the negotiations)
3. Risks
4. Questions
5. Alternatives
6. Influencers

Handing in

• Upload your work anywhere in the cloud (Dropbox e.g.: do not e-mail).
• File has to be converted to pdf and named with your team number. E.g. A01 Creativity Assignment year 0
• Copy the link (only the link, not the document or content) and put it in your Team File before the deadline into tab Year 0, cell D38
• Be sure the file is freely accessible without logging in or anything, just the click on the link should open it!

Additional reading and references

• Stakeholders
• Distribution
• “Business Model Generation: A Handbook for Visionaries, Game Changers, and Challengers” by A. Osterwalder & Y. Peigneur
• "Business Model Canvas & Elevator pitch” by E. Bakker
• "Using the business model canvas to improve investment processes" by J. C. Sort and C. Nielsen
• “Value Proposition Design: How to Create Products and Services Customers Want” by A. Osterwalder & Y. Peigneur
• “Negotiating” by R. J. Lewicki

NB! This list is not an exhaustive list! Do find more materials!

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