1. ASSIGNMENT 2 – Market Research and business plan

2. Submission: 17 th January 2014 by 11.00 am to Blackboard

3. contents Prepare a document outlining the business case for a particular development within your degree specialism. This may be something within a company such as a new product, or may be, say, a fresh consultancy proposal, a project proposal or a new topic for your business. This may be based on your major project, if it fits into any of these categories.

4. minimum a comprehensive analysis of existing and similar offerings on the market already, including a feature and parametric analysis (particularly a price - performance comparison) indicating how your proposal fits into the existing scenario, an opportunity specification 1 or similar, indicating the costs of the proposal and the expected payback including timing a description of how you intend to staff the proposal, which may include how you personally would expect to fit into it play a suitable part in it, and consideration as to how you might fit the proposal into future planning. 1 Baxter, M (1996) Product Design: Chapman and Hall

5. comment By all means use software packages provided by banks for small business set up – but do not follow them blindly, and realise that they have significant limitations. They will be picked up by Turnitin You MUST note the penalties for academic misconduct

6. Deliverables 50% of the marks for the module. Structured, illustrated professional report with tabulated costs where appropriate. Preferably no appendices

7. Assessment criteria Analysis of existing offerings and evidence20% Business case, opportunity specification or similar including costs, payback and timing50% Staffing arrangements including a skills audit if relevant10% Future planning15% Presentation and detail 5%

8. submission Maximum ten pages excluding header, contents pages, references and appendices (if relevant) Illustrate as appropriate Illustrations placed in the text count towards the ten pages Blackboard through the Turnitin software Word or pdf less than 10MB A single document Greater than 20% non-originality will be investigated