Investigating entrepreneurial opportunities
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| 3 Tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) | |
| End-of-course assessment | No residential school |
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This course is available for study in the countries shown. Fees may vary by country.
Summary
This course addresses the crucial first steps related to developing new business ideas, implementing innovations and launching new ventures. It will develop business-planning capabilities, skills and understanding, including market and competitor research and the use of important financial concepts such as break-even and cash flow. It will lead you through a systematic process of testing your ideas and experience to arrive at a business proposition with ambitious yet attainable objectives. The course will help you to focus on your own capabilities and skills in project planning; business project appraisal; report writing; and environmental and personal analysis.
Course content
Investigating entrepreneurial opportunities provides a well structured and clear learning experience for people who are drawn to the idea of starting their own venture. This could be a completely new business, the commercialisation of an innovation in a larger organisation, or a new service in the social or voluntary sectors where there is a need to take into account the rigours of competitive pressures. The course will develop not only the necessary analytic skills but also a better understanding of the needs of market-based competition and the confidence to address these needs successfully.
You will learn to critically assess different aspects of the external environment and of your own resources and capabilities with the aim of establishing and sustaining a profitable new venture. In particular you will learn how to:
- assess market dynamics, such as competitors’ and suppliers’ strengths and weaknesses or market gaps, in relation to target customers and competitors
- identify critical points of competitive advantage and business success
- identify necessary base resources, capabilities and skills needs
- gather primary and secondary information for use in customer segmentation, action planning, cashflow and debt management
- develop personal and team attributes and capabilities for entrepreneurial success
- develop the ability to set clear and attainable objectives and sustain self-motivation, focus and persistence
- assess the feasibility of business propositions.
The course starts with a rigorous clarification of the basic business idea with respect to your own capabilities, external environment (focused mainly on likely competitive pressures) and available resources. After a reasonably sound business idea has been established, the course moves up a gear with a more rigorous examination of the proposed market, the marketing and information-gathering implications, and concludes with a robust financial assessment. The course is arranged as two blocks, each with its own workbook. The first block is Developing Entrepreneurial Ideas, which has five sections – the first three on different aspects of enterprise and innovation; the final two on market and resource issues. The second block, Investigating Enterprise Feasibility, has three sections – scoping the research, marketing research and financial viability.
There’s a Course Guide and a course website. The Course Guide will be a ‘living document’. It will provide the rationale for the course, an outline of its learning objectives, a description of the course content and structure and indicate where it fits with other related courses. The Course Guide also contains information on tutor-marked assignments and the end-of-course assessment plus descriptions of OU requirements and systems. The Course Guide has copies of the checklists and models used in the online activities as well as copies of each of the TMA and ECA questions.
B322 allows sufficient time for discussion and reflection. The activities are online and generally take the form of interactive checklists or grids to support analysis. The structure of the course is iterative in concept with succeeding activities drawing on previous activities and in-text questions. The activities feed into the TMAs and, at the end, into the ECA. Indeed, you are encouraged to attach activity-driven analysis as appendices to your TMAs. In order to encourage reflection, certain activities return to previous analysis but with a tighter focus. As a consequence, learning and analysis accrete as the course progresses but without undue increase in workload. The purpose of B322 is to develop a robust and sustainable business idea and not a business plan per se. However, the analysis embedded in Investigating entrepreneurial opportunities supports the development of business, growth and marketing plans plus, above all, the understanding and flexibility for you to decide what is fit for your purpose and the right course of action for yourself.
Vocational relevance
The course is of direct relevance to people who aspire to start and manage their own firm or small organisation in the social sector. It is also suitable for people who manage innovation or new product units in larger organisations.
Entry
There are no entry requirements to this course. Although it requires no prior study, the learning experience may be richer for students who are familiar with basic business or management concepts such as those encountered on An introduction to business studies (B120) (or the discontinued courses B200 and B202).
If you have any doubt about the suitability of the course, please contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.
Qualifications
B322 is an optional course in our
- BA (Honours) Business Studies (B04)
- BA (Honours) Leadership and Management (B54)
- BA/BSc (Honours) Design and Innovation (B61)
It can also count towards most of our other degrees at bachelors level, where it is equally appropriate to a BA or BSc. We advise you to refer to the relevant qualification descriptions for information on the circumstances in which this course can count towards these qualifications because from time to time the structure and requirements may change.
If you have a disability or additional requirement
Written transcripts of any audio components and Adobe Portable Document Format (PDF) versions of printed material are available. Some Adobe PDF components may not be available or fully accessible using a screen reader and musical notation and mathematical, scientific, and foreign language materials may be particularly difficult to read in this way. Large print versions of the course materials can be provided on request. Other alternative formats of the course materials may be available in the future. Our Services for disabled students website has the latest information about availability.
If you are a new student, or new to courses using a computer or the internet, you will need to inform us of your particular needs as soon as possible, as some of our support services may take several weeks to arrange. Details of how to do this and our range of support services are described in our booklet Meeting Your Needs which you can download or request from our Student Registration & Enquiry Service.
You can also find information about accessible course materials, financial support and the Disabled Students' Allowance, equipment and other services, on our Services for disabled students website. It also includes our contact details for advice and support both before you register and while you are studying.
Course materials
What's included
Course guide, two workbooks, case studies, journal article prints, electronic conferencing, a website and web-based activities.
Computing requirements
This course includes online computer activities – you can access these using a web browser that can play Flash and Shockwave.
You will need internet access and a computer. If you have purchased a new computer since 2002 it should meet your course computing requirements. Check our Technical Requirements section if your computer is older than this or is otherwise unusual.
Teaching and assessment
Support from your tutor
You’ll be allocated a tutor who will facilitate your tutorial group both through formal electronic collaboration and informally in the tutorial-group forum.
Contact our Student Registration & Enquiry Service if you want to know more about study with The Open University before you register.
Assessment
The assessment details for this course can be found in the facts box above.
You will be expected to submit your tutor-marked assignments (TMAs) online through the eTMA system unless there are some difficulties which prevent you from doing so. In these circumstances, you must negotiate with your tutor to get their agreement to submit your assignment on paper.
The online tutorials will be linked to TMA preparation and feedback plus cover key concepts at relevant stages of the course.
Students also studied
Students who studied this course also studied at some time:
Future availability
The details given here are for the course that starts in November 2010. We expect it to be available once a year.
How to register
To register a place on this course return to the top of the page and use the Click to register button. For more information and advice about registration see OU Study Explained.
About this page
An undergraduate course in Business and Management.
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