Strategy and Innovation
Strategic Analysis and Innovation Strategy for a UK Organisation
This postgraduate Strategy and Innovation assessment requires students to conduct a detailed strategic analysis of an allocated organisation and present the findings through a series of professionally designed information dashboards. The purpose of the analysis is to establish the organisation's current strategic position and use the resulting evidence to recommend an appropriate and justifiable innovation strategy. The work is expected to demonstrate master's-level evaluation, interpretation and synthesis rather than descriptive or checklist-based analysis. The first major analytical area concerns the organisation's external environment. Students evaluate the broader business environment, analyse the firm's industry and undertake competitor analysis, including consideration of the organisation's strategic group. Analysis should concentrate on the most consequential environmental factors and integrate general and industry-level evidence rather than simply listing factors. Competitor evaluation can examine issues such as products and services, market commonality, positioning, distinctive value propositions, first-mover advantage and breakthrough innovation. The internal analysis examines the firm's resources, capabilities and sources of competitive advantage. Appropriate analytical techniques should be used to assess competitive resources and key capabilities, with the internal value chain helping to identify factors capable of supporting competitive advantage. Students must also evaluate the organisation's business-level strategy and consider whether its resources and capabilities support its competitive positioning. Corporate-level analysis considers the firm's degree of diversification, internationalisation strategy, growth through acquisitions, mergers or organic development, and any cooperative strategies. These elements should be evaluated against the organisation's capabilities, resources and competitive context. The analysis concludes by interpreting the evidence to establish the firm's overall strategic position and recommending an innovation strategy or approach to innovation. Presentation quality is also important: the report should use an effective combination of text, charts, diagrams and other graphical forms, with professional formatting and accurate referencing. Overview word count: approximately 330 words.
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Entrepreneurship and Business Start-up
5,000 words
Enterprise Start-up Portfolio — Business Plan, Fundraising Strategy and Entrepreneurial Self-Assessment
An enterprise start-up portfolio assessment asks students to originate a business idea and build the full supporting case for it, then present that case both in writing and as a recorded investor pitch. It is a pass/fail module structure in which every component must be passed individually — a strong business plan cannot compensate for a weak pitch, or vice versa. The written portfolio divides into two unequal halves. The larger part is the business plan itself, built to a fixed section structure with prescribed word allocations: an executive summary; the business idea set against an identified market gap, with market research and competitor analysis; customer profiles and segmentation; product development; marketing and communications; financials and business models covering costing, pricing, sales and revenue; and the founding team with its core competencies. The word allocations are not decorative — financials carry the single largest weighting in both the word budget and the marking rubric, which tells students where analytical depth is expected and where concision is. The smaller part is reflective. It covers the fundraising strategy — which funding sources are realistic for this venture, and how each would be targeted, approached and secured — and the student's own entrepreneurial tendency, informed by a standardised self-assessment instrument taken online. The rubric here rewards critical self-reflection over description: reporting a test result scores poorly; interpreting what the result means for how this founder should build a team and where they need support scores well. The pitch component is assessed on visual and audio quality, content and message, comprehension, delivery, and evident preparation. Technical execution carries real marks, which students routinely underestimate. Two things separate strong submissions. The first is internal consistency: the revenue model must follow from the pricing, the pricing from the customer segment, the segment from the identified gap. Plans that read as seven separate essays under seven headings lose marks even when each section is individually competent. The second is specificity in the financials — costing assumptions stated and justified, rather than round numbers presented without derivation. Note that assessments of this type commonly require the student to retain all drafts and earlier versions of their work, and to sign a detailed declaration itemising exactly how any AI tools were used. Our support on assessments of this type is guidance-based. Typical areas of help include: explaining what a market gap argument needs to be credible, showing how competitor analysis should be structured rather than listed, clarifying how costing and pricing assumptions should be built and presented, reviewing whether a fundraising strategy matches the venture's actual stage, explaining how reflective writing is assessed at postgraduate level, and checking a completed draft against the published rubric.
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