Walden University



Contents

Where do I start if I don’t know what to do? 2

What questions should I ask myself if I think a New Venture Business Plan is right for me? 3

What if I am not sure about selecting a business or organization to analyze? 4

What Do I need to consider if a Due Diligence Report is right for me? 4

What are good resources to look for examples of Business Plans? 5

What are good resources to look for examples of Due Diligence Reports? 6

What does “New Venture” mean? Does it mean that I can’t write a business plan for an existing business? 6

What kind of information should be in the background section of my project if I am writing a Business Plan for a New Venture? 6

What kind of information should be in the background section of my project if I am doing a Business Analysis (Due Diligence Report)? 7

Do I need to substantiate my reasons for choosing my project? 7

How long should my vision and mission statement for my New Venture be? 8

Can I develop a Vision and a Mission statement for my New Venture and not include any citations and referencing? 8

If I am doing a Business Analysis (Due Diligence) report, what do I have to write about when I analyze the Vision and Mission Statements? 8

I am doing a Business Analysis (Due Diligence) report, what do I have to do if I think that the business I am investigating has the right Vision and Mission and I don’t have recommendations about how to improve or change it? 9

How do I find out more about the culture that exists at a business I am studying for my Business Analysis (Due Diligence Report)? 9

How do I know what type of Legal status my venture should have or how do I assess whether the business I am analyzing has the right legal status? 9

How do I figure out and ensure that my product or service is aligned with local laws/regulations and the local culture? 10

How do I figure out my staffing needs and where I can recruit my staff? 11

How do I figure out how much I will need to compensate employees? 11

What am I expected to do to analyze the culture of an existing organization if I am completing a Business Analysis Report? 12

The Rubric talks about “Prescriptive versus Descriptive”, but I don’t really know what that means? 12

The Rubric talks about building an argument, but I am not sure what that means? 12

Do I need to write an introductory paragraph for every list in my paper? 13

Do I need to prepare a reference list for my business plan or due diligence report? 13

Where do I start if I don’t know what to do?

You have two options on the program project:

 

1) Develop a business plan for a new venture idea you have

2) Develop a business due diligence analysis report for an existing business

Before you decide which option to pursue for this project, you may want to ask yourself these questions:

• Do you have a desire to be an entrepreneur?

• Are you excited about building a business from scratch?

• Do you have a small business that needs a plan?

If your answer is ‘Yes’ to any of these, you may prefer to work on a New Venture Business Plan. See the Question in this FAQ “What questions should I ask myself if I think a New Venture Business Plan is right for me?”

If your answers are no, then the business analysis (due diligence) report may be a better option.  See the Question in this FAQ “What Do I need to consider if a Due Diligence Report is right for me?”

If you need assistance in deciding which option is best for you or have specific questions about what you have in mind, consult your instructor or email MBAProgramProject@waldenu.edu.

What questions should I ask myself if I think a New Venture Business Plan is right for me?

In order to make sure you are thinking ‘big enough’, think through the following questions to ensure that your idea is not limited to a very small business. Successful entrepreneurs think big and the MBA Program Project is intended to enable you to create a plan that will have opportunity beyond what is commonly thought of as a hobby business.

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What if I am not sure about selecting a business or organization to analyze?

The following decision tree is intended to assist you with the process of identifying an organization you may have interest in analyzing.

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What Do I need to consider if a Due Diligence Report is right for me?

With the business due diligence analysis option, you can select a company in the industry that you like to know more about for the analysis. The goal is to select a company that will give you the opportunity to practice the theory, concept, and practical knowledge you learned from each MBA course.  You will analyze the company and make recommendations for improvements and justify why your recommendations are appropriate and will lead to specified and desired results.

You need to consider the following when selecting the company that you want to do a business due diligence on:

 

1) You will need to have access to documents such as statement of incorporation, organization structure, business plan, and financial statements of the existing business.  These types of documents are normally available to the public if it is a publicly traded company.  However, for a private company, you will need to ensure that you will be given access to these documents by the company. No proprietary, confidential, or otherwise internal information relating to a company and its performance that is not publicly available should be used in your work. It is your responsibility to ensure that you do not divulge this information. Generally, this type of information is available to senior executives or distributed to employees as confidential and for internal use only. Any information that is available on the Internet, reported by the media, or public knowledge does not fall under this restriction. It is critical that you investigate access to documents at the start of this project to avoid finding out 2-3 classes into the project that you will not have access to the type of information you will need to successfully complete this project.

 

2) You must change the name of the organization and generalize the location so that you do not explicitly identify the organization. It is important that you redact any information that will lead a reader to easily identify the origination. You are required to change the name of the company in all materials (including drafts shared with peers) to protect the information. In some cases, you may elect maintain confidentiality by removing key pieces of data that might give away the organization’s identity or inappropriately divulge proprietary details. You should work with your instructors when these situations occur.

3) You may not survey or systematically interview employees at the company. If at some point you wish to pursue interviews or surveys, you will need to follow the standard university procedures to obtain prior approval from the Walden University Institutional Review Board. Collecting data from human subjects without IRB approval can result in dismissal from the program. You will need to produce your recommendations based on analysis of documents or observations you are able to make. You will need to be careful that no proprietary, sensitive, or confidential information is disclosed in your reporting.

4) You should find out about the organization’s policies on use of company resources (including email addresses, printing materials etc.) for individual projects. Many organizations have restrictions on use of company resources.

 

These are the items to consider before you finalize on the company for your project.  Keep in mind that you cannot analyze the company on a course-by-course (MBA course) basis if you cannot get access to documents and information.

What are good resources to look for examples of Business Plans?

The Small Business Administration is a good source for this.



Business Plans Handbooks (Gale Virtual Reference Library) has samples of real business plans from manufacturing, retail and service companies. This database can be accessed through the Walden Library.

What are good resources to look for examples of Due Diligence Reports?

Hoovers Database provides information which can be used for due diligence. This includes information such as an overview of the firm, their web site, sales numbers, competitors, key people and products and operations. This database contains information on over 600 companies and can be access through the Walden Library.

Also available through the Library are Subject Guides. If you click on the Subject Guides link in the Library, you can access a guide on Management and Technology, which is then further broken down into more specific business related topics. Some of these resources can provide due diligence information on companies.

The following is a fairly detailed due diligence checklist that may be helpful in preparing a report: Lannigan, P. (2010). Mergers and acquisitions: Due diligence list. Retrieved from

What does “New Venture” mean? Does it mean that I can’t write a business plan for an existing business?

We use the term New Venture to include not only businesses or other organizations that have yet to be started, but also to include businesses that may exist but have not had a business plan to date, or a businesses or organization you want to grow or change direction in some significant way. If you are creating a business plan for an company that already exists but has now plan, you must change the name and location of the business.

No proprietary, confidential, or otherwise internal information relating to a company and its performance that is not publicly available should be used in your work. It is your responsibility to ensure that you do not divulge this information. Generally, this type of information is available to senior executives or distributed to employees as confidential and for internal use only. Any information that is available on the Internet, reported by the media, or public knowledge does not fall under this restriction. You may not interview individuals that work at the company or survey those employees. If at some point you wish to pursue interviews or surveys, you will need to follow the standard university procedures to obtain prior approval from the Institutional Review Board. Collecting data from human subjects without IRB approval can result in dismissal from the program.

Do not assume you can use company resources such as email addresses, printing materials etc. for your project. If you work for the organization you are studying, check policies about doing work on company time or using company resources.

What kind of information should be in the background section of my project if I am writing a Business Plan for a New Venture?

Your background section should include information that enables the reader to see the big picture -- including in which market the venture is in; what the product or service is and why it will be successful. Usually background sections are 1-2 pages at most. It is likely you will add to your background throughout your Program Project assignments in your MBA courses. This is a section you may want to review again as you develop your plan.

In addition to background on the company, you’ll want to provide background on the principals from the firm – the owners and managers. Investors will want to know what type of skills, work experience and education the people who are going to start this firm bring to the company.

What kind of information should be in the background section of my project if I am doing a Business Analysis (Due Diligence Report)?

If you are doing a business analysis, you should include the current state of the enterprise, including what product/service the business delivers, where it operates, its relevant history to this point, why it has been successful and so on. The Background should provide the reader with enough information to get a sense of the business as it currently exists.

For the business due diligence option, the background section should include a problem statement. You will be recommending a solution for this critical business problem based on your findings from the business due diligence analysis.

You should also include information on the leaders of the firm, especially those who will be impacting the changes or who have impacted the current successes in the company.

Do I need to substantiate my reasons for choosing my project?

If you select a New Venture Business Plan:

For the purposes of your MBA Program Project, you are expected to delineate the opportunity your New Venture will address or why there is now opportunity to grow or change direction for an existing business or enterprise you have started. This section of your project should focus on the information you have based on your initial research that indicates that your idea has value and a reasonable chance to succeed. You should use evidence you found doing research locally, in the Walden library or using other credible resources that lead you to conclude that the venture has merit.

If you select to complete a Business Analysis (Due Diligence Report)

For the purposes of your MBA Program Project, you will need to substantiate your rationale for selecting the organization you plan to study and indicate why. “To learn more about the company” is not a valid reason for selecting this option since the business due diligence report is not a “book report” project. You will need to support your reason for selecting this organization through your analysis of the current status of the organization and unmet opportunity you identify the organization could potentially achieve. In most cases, you will select an organization from an sector you are most familiar with and have knowledge about. Your expertise will be important as you analyze the organization and make recommendations for improvements that will lead to specific, desired results.

How long should my vision and mission statement for my New Venture be?

One or two sentences should be sufficient for the actual statements. First, a vision creates a vivid picture of the future for a company. The mission clearly identifies the intent and purpose of the business. Both should be written clearly and succinctly. You want to keep them focused. Your mission and vision statements should be one (or two) sentence(s) each.

This does not mean this section of your Program Project only consists of these statements. You should include the background leading to vision and mission including why you determined your Vision and Mission was appropriate to your new venture, how you plan to communicate, implement, and reinforce them, and a discussion about assumptions surrounding each. Thus, you MUST support your vision and mission statements with a discussion of your rationale and supporting goals/key success factors, assumptions, principles or tenets.

For example, if your mission is "to make lawns green," then under the mission statement section of your plan you would discuss, cite, and reference the importance of a mission statement, what it does, your actual mission statement, how you arrived at it, and some assumptions about how you will go about gathering buy-in from employees as well as how you will lead the implementation. The same is true for the vision statement.

Can I develop a Vision and a Mission statement for my New Venture and not include any citations and referencing?

If you are writing a plan for a new venture (a business plan), your mission, vision, and key success factors themselves will probably not be referenced or cited because you are creating them (unless you are analyzing an already established company). However, these are excellent sections into which to weave course material or other resources you find that support the concepts related to each statement, information used in terms of effectiveness of strategies and implementation, and other similar background.

If I am doing a Business Analysis (Due Diligence) report, what do I have to write about when I analyze the Vision and Mission Statements?

You should provide your analysis of the Vision and Mission statements including whether they align with the other information that organization purports or how the customers/clients of the organization perceive it. Your analysis should include your assessment of whether and how the Vision and Mission meet the criteria for these statements (succinct, one or two sentences, aligned with each other, provide unique differentiation for the venture - see New Venture Rubric Tab for more details about criteria that are generally applied to Vision and Mission statements). As you find room for the organization to improve their Vision or Mission Statements, provide your recommendations and justify your reasoning.

I am doing a Business Analysis (Due Diligence) report, what do I have to do if I think that the business I am investigating has the right Vision and Mission and I don’t have recommendations about how to improve or change it?

In this case you should explicitly discuss why the current Vision and Mission statements are suitable, referring to the criteria for good Vision and Mission statements. You may want to include examples to illustrate that the company’s mission is align with the vision of the company.

How do I find out more about the culture that exists at a business I am studying for my Business Analysis (Due Diligence Report)?

The best place to start is the company’s annual report. Most companies have their annual report available in PDF format on their Websites. You can also request hardcopy of the annual report mailed to you by contacting the company’s investor relations or public relations departments.

Other good sources are industry analyst reports such as reports from Gartner and other industry analysts. You can also find information regarding the company by doing research on the Web.

You might also consider researching the firm using social media, such as LinkedIn. These networks can provide some information on the company and may have comments from current employees that might indicate what their corporate culture is like. Use of these sites must be done under the following constraints:

• You are permitted you use these sites as you would for any other document analysis. You must only read and analyze what you find there – you may not interact or systematically ask questions of members without approval through the Walden Institutional Research Board (IRB) process.

• Ensure that the site itself does not have policy prohibiting use of the content for this purpose.

How do I know what type of Legal status my venture should have or how do I assess whether the business I am analyzing has the right legal status?

The Small Business Administration is a good source to get better understanding on what legal status will be best for you and how the legal status of your business will impact you as an individual.



Another organization which is helpful for new businesses is SCORE (Service Core of Retired Executives). They offer expert guidance on all aspects of a business, including selected the legal form which is best for your firm.



How do I figure out and ensure that my product or service is aligned with local laws/regulations and the local culture?

You can also search the Web using these keywords like "business banned local community" for more information on this topic. While you will need to check the credibility of what you find on the internet and in many cases these sources are not what we consider scholarly articles, they will help you to see the issues when the business is in conflicts with local community laws or values. You should research the Web and Walden library to learn more about the location where you want to establish your business. You can also review the local city government or community Websites.

Here is a supplemental reading that can help to provoke some thoughts ion this area:

The Polluter's Dilemma -- Business Ethics Case Study. Full Text Available Business Ethics Case Studies: The Polluter's Dilemma, 2007, p1-1, 1p

Rigotti, A., Bourne, D., Rosen, A., Locke, J., & Shelling, T. Workplace Compliance With a No-Smoking Law: A Randomized Community Intervention Trial. Journal of Public Health, Feb1992, Vol. 82 Issue 2, p229-235 Retrieved from Business Source Complete

The intent of this section is that you have explicitly reviewed the alignment of your idea or the business you are studying and have documented that there are not significant issues or concerns with operations of that type of business. For example, if you were thinking about opening a billiards hall that would serve alcohol, you may not likely want to consider a location near a school or playground. Similarly, if you were contemplating a spa with massage therapy, you would want to define the services carefully so that they align with the laws or local customs. If your business will produce chemical pollutants or create excessive noise, you would want to check that you are not exceeding EPA laws and guidelines or local zoning and regulatory constraints that could impact your ability to operate. If you want to hire teenage workers, you would need to know that legal restrictions of using under-age workers and propose a plan that will enable you to hire these workers. In some U.S. states underage workers may not sell alcohol or firearms, are subject to different wages, may only work certain hours or limited hours each week.

The key for this section is to explicitly document based on your research that you have selected a good location for your business and that your business will operate within the laws and customs of the area. You are not expected to write a legal document, but rather present an explicit case that you have thought about and researched the issues carefully and addressed them as needed. If after research, it cannot be determined at the time of writing this component of your business plan or report, you should include a risk section and state that this is a potential risk and define a process to further research this in subsequent efforts to complete your program project.

How do I figure out my staffing needs and where I can recruit my staff?

This is part of your business planning. The Small Business Administration Website is a good source for learning more about topics such as should you use contractors or employees and how to recruit and manage employees.



Another excellent source for managing staff is the Society for Human Resource Management at:



The SCORE web site offers a number of resources to help with Human Resources. They have a number of quick guides and well as online workshops and podcasts.



How do I figure out how much I will need to compensate employees?

It is important that you have a realistic idea of how much you will need to compensate employees. For your initial planning, you need to be in the ballpark. You may refine these numbers later in the program as you complete more of your core courses.

You may check with your local banks, many times they have small business units that may provide information on compensation rates for various industries or jobs. Other resources to check include the U.S. Bureau of Labor Statistics or the Small Business Administration:







Another resource for this is O*NET Online. This site is created for the US Department of Labor. If you enter the name of the occupation in the search box, it will bring up detailed information on the career, including the type of tasks they perform, technology used, skills needed, education requirements, job descriptions, and salaries. You can see the national average for this position or you can enter the state and see the averages for your area.



Public job sites such as or offer some very good resources for determining compensation ranges depending on job title. In addition, the Bureau of Labor Statistics can provide some historical perspective although this may be harder to determine by job title. Industry websites often have information related to compensation and benefits offered by position.

What am I expected to do to analyze the culture of an existing organization if I am completing a Business Analysis Report?

When you analyze the culture of an existing organization, you have three options based on the information available to you. If there is sufficient information to analyze the existing culture through published documents from which you can surmise or learn about the culture (often you can learn a great deal about the culture through what the organization says about itself, who the leaders are, the type of organization structure that exists and so on), students may:

(1) Provide a thorough, analysis of the culture that exists with accompanying recommendations about how leadership could influence it in positive ways.

(2) Provide a thorough analysis of the type of culture that should exist, if the current culture does not appears to be missing essential elements, providing detailed explanations of the rationale for this culture.

If there is not sufficient information to provide a detailed analysis of the existing culture, students need to:

(3) Provide a through description and analysis of the type of culture that the organization such as the one under study should nurture with substantiated rationale about why that would be desirable.

The Rubric talks about “Prescriptive versus Descriptive”, but I don’t really know what that means?

Your Program Project submission should contain a mix of descriptive and prescriptive components. Descriptive means you are give details about what is or what exists (the who, what, when..) where the prescriptive is more analytical and requires you to synthesize information to talk about how and why. Essentially, as your goal is to demonstrate the strength of your plan for a new venture or recommendations for an existing company, thus a significant part of your project includes prescriptive elements. So, for example, if you are describing the culture you plan to cultivate in your new venture, you should (1) describe the key aspects of the culture (leadership, pros and cons of the culture, etc.); and (2) provide a detailed analysis of each aspect of the culture addressed in this section, including plans for nurturing the culture or changing it should it not evolve as intended. If you are working on an analysis of an existing business you should (1) describe the key aspects of the culture as is exists (or as you believe it to be based on the information the organization presents about itself) and (2) provide detailed analysis of the key aspects of the culture you identified and recommendations for how the culture could be influenced positively to create specific desired results. You should always include relevant citations and evidence to support your analysis.

The Rubric talks about building an argument, but I am not sure what that means?

In your program project, whether New Venture or Due Diligence report, you are trying to convince someone to do something (fund a new venture, change direction in an existing business). Your project should persuade your audience that you have a strong case based on critical analysis and supported by research and evidence (date, information). You should be writing your project in a way that the builds in the logic of why what you are proposing will lead to a successful end result as you have defined it.

You will want to start your argument by speaking about the general and work toward the specific. Start by speaking to the industry as a whole and then work your way down to your product or service and how it fits this industry.

Do I need to write an introductory paragraph for every list in my paper?

A rule of thumb about APA—a section of a paper should never have a topic heading with just a list underneath it. There should be an introduction to the list as to what it is, why it is important to the discussion, etc.—and after that you can add the list.

Do I need to prepare a reference list for my business plan or due diligence report?

The quick answer is yes. You should prepare a reference list as you would in any APA formatted paper. These references should support your factual statements in your plan or report and be properly cited within the document.

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