20828 - BUSINESS AND MARKETING PLAN WORKSHOP

The course aims to provide students with a comprehensive understanding of business and marketing planning. Through a mix of lectures, case discussions, guest speeches, and group projects, participants will learn how to develop an effective business plan for a hypothetical new start-up. The main focus will be on marketing strategies and their representation through a well-structured marketing plan. The existence, survival, and growth of any company - not only start-ups - are in fact essentially linked with their capabilities of developing effective marketing strategies; but, in order to be effective, any marketing strategy must be strongly sustainable in terms of economic, financial (and today, more than in the past), also environmental and societal performances.

The course will cover the following main topics:

1. Introduction to Business and Marketing Planning
2. The business plan: why, what, and how
3. The business model canvas
4. The marketing plan
   • Demand and competition analysis
   • Value proposition design
   • Marketing actions
5. Financial forecasts

• Recognize the importance of strategic planning
• Define the concepts of business and marketing plan
• Explain the main contents of a business and a marketing plan

• Analyze the market demand and evaluate its potential
• Design an effective, innovative, and differentiated customer-based value proposition
• Prepare and present a business and a marketing plan for a new start-up
• Discuss and assess the quality of a business plan from a potential investor's perspective

• Face-to-face lectures
• Guest speaker's talks (in class or in distance)
• Exercises (exercises, database, software etc.)
• Group assignments

The course will have a highly interactive class. Besides traditional face-to-face lectures, it will be developed with:

- in-class exercises: for applying analytical tools

- case study discussion: to exercise in finding the relevant data and making sense of complex problems.

- group project activities: to practice the development and discussion of a real business and marketing plan.

Grades will be computed as follows:

• Group assignment (60% of the final grade): participants, organized in groups, will develop a marketing plan for a specific product or brand. MPs will be presented in class at the end of the course;
• Individual, written, closed-book exam (40% of the final grade): a final exam (pass/fail) made of a mix of closed and open questions covering the topics discussed in class.

For non-attending students, the evaluation is fully based on a final written exam which has the same structure as the attending students.

• Slides of the course
• Readings available on BBoard or in a Course Reserve available in the Library