Next Steps in Your Business Venture

Now that you have gone through the process of brainstorming ideas throughout this course, we will look at how we might decide on one opportunity to develop throughout the rest of your program. Take your time with this, and do plenty of research as you learned about in Unit 3.

This will not be graded; it is for your own use as you own in on an idea.

Here are the steps we'd like you to follow:

1. Use the methods you learned about in Units 1 and 2 to brainstorm 5-10 ideas for a business.
2. Once you've done this, consider your skills and abilities. Then, complete step one, personal SWOT analysis and the Goals worksheets, to help you understand and narrow down your business ideas.
3. Now that you've narrowed down your personal SWOT and goals, please choose three ideas you'd like to focus on and complete the opportunity analysis in step two. Remember, research is required to complete this accurately!
4. Once you've completed the opportunity canvas for each idea, perform SWOT and PESTLE analyses on each.
5. At this point, review all of the information you've gathered and give yourself time to think about it. Then ask yourself the following questions so you can narrow down to one idea:
   1. Which idea are you most excited about?
   2. Which idea do you have the skills and abilities to accomplish?
   3. Which idea most closely matches the personal goals you wrote down in Step One?
   4. How much money would you need to start up your favorite idea? Is this realistic, in that you can obtain the funds?
   5. Do you have the time to implement the idea you've chosen?
   6. What resources might you need to be successful in this business?

Once you've answered these questions, the business idea you'd like to move forward with should be fairly clear. If it isn't, we suggest going back and looking at different ideas until you find the idea that feels right!

Source: Saylor Academy
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