How to set up a Business Network? - Worksheet Series - Volume 2

• SWOT Analysis
• Partner Selection
• Negotiating Your Alliance
• Letter of Intent Issues
• Your Business Plan
• Creative Thinking
• Generating New Ideas

Your Business Plan

Everyone has a business plan — it may be in their head or on the pages of a lengthy and voluminous document in the bottom of the desk drawer. The trick is to draft a plan of action that is on a single page — something that allows you and others to focus on the most important issues and goals, define direction in addition to quantifying the main products, services, markets, core competencies and technology. It also helps the partners determine the critical success factors and projects to achieve your business network goals.

In general, companies should strive to come to a general agreement on goals and overall project direction. The business plan is the blueprint for your networking idea and the final stage in a company's strategic analysis. It uses this information to set the overall direction for the strategic alliance. Simple, well-defined goals make it easier to determine if the partnership is achieving its intended purpose. Getting it all on one page is the first step in that all important process.

Instructions

Fill out the one-page business plan in all categories. It may take you several tries to complete it to your satisfaction because many of the topics are interrelated.

Notes

The One-Page Business Plan

Complete this one-page business plan in all category areas. Use pointform statements. It may take you several tries to complete it to your satisfaction because many topics are interrelated.

Creative Thinking

Creative approaches at all stages of the networking process have beneficial results, particularly when interacting with your potential partners, even if they do not consider themselves as creative people. By identifying the perceptual, cultural and emotional blocks hampering the creative thinking process, your strategic alliance can indeed become quite creative.

Creative thinkers are made, not born. There are many common blocks to creativity - perceptual blocks such as seeing only what you want to see, cultural blocks like wanting to conform, and emotional blocks like fear of making a mistake. Work to create an atmosphere in your alliance or business network where creative thinking and new ways of looking at old problems are valued and encouraged.

Instructions

Identify the perceptual, cultural and emotional blocks that hamper your creative thinking process. Think of new and creative ways in which you might change these roadblocks. Practice creative thinking at every opportunity.

Notes

Blocks To Creative Thinking

Identify and circle the perceptual, cultural and emotional blocks that hamper your creative thinking process and prevent you from creative problem solving and opportunity identification. Think of new and creative ways in which you might change these roadblocks. Practice creative thinking at every opportunity.

Perceptual Blocks:

• difficulty in isolating the problem
• not paying enough attention to the environment in which the problem exists
• not investigating the obvious
• putting emphasis on past experience when examining present problems
• failing to distinguish between cause and effect
• seeing what you want to see, or expect to see, instead of what you could see
• being limited by perceived constraints.

Cultural Blocks:

• wanting to conform to an accepted pattern
• putting economy and practicality above all other considerations
• believing it is wrong to doubt everything or to be too inquisitive
• placing too much faith in statistics
• having too much or too little knowledge about the field you're working in
• believing fantasizing is a waste of time
• believing fun can not accomplish anything
• being too dependent on tradition and the way we have always done it
• believing how hard and how long you work will directly affect how well something turns out.

Emotional Blocks:

• being afraid of making a mistake
• being afraid of making a fool of yourself
• finding it hard to reject workable solutions in order to look for a better one
• wanting to succeed quickly
• having a strong need for security (fear of innovation and risk)
• distrust of colleagues and subordinates
• lack of drive to follow a solution through completion
• lack of commitment to put a possible solution to the test
• inability to let an idea incubate
• refusal to take a detour in order to reach a goal.

Generating New Ideas

Coming up with new ideas is never easy - it is hard work and challenging as well. This exercise helps to identify the avenues that create new ideas — all important if your strategic alliance or business network is to be successful and able to tackle new challenges.

There are established techniques and rules to help people generate new ideas and become creative thinkers. Some are as simple as relaying and having fun — others have to do with becoming a good communicator and listener to what other people have to say. As the previous topic remarked creative thinkers are made, not born.

Instructions

On the page opposite, identify and circle the rules you break most often when trying to generate new ideas — then set a plan in action to change your ways at the next meeting with your business network associates. See what a difference a few changes can make!

Notes

Thirteen Rules For Generating New Ideas

Identify and circle the rules you break most often when trying to generate new ideas — then set a plan in action to change your ways at the next meeting with your business network associates.

1. Believe you are creative and don't be afraid of being wrong.
    
2. Really listen to what other people have to say.
    
3. Listen to, accept and think about the criticism you receive from others.
    
4. Break with routine. Force yourself into something new to gain a new perspective.
    
5. Role play. Pretend you are someone or something other than who you are.
    
6. Relax. Have fun. Kid around. Humour and fun allow the mind to venture down new, previously untravelled pathways.
    
7. Practice coming up with ideas for every problem and challenge you see, hear about, or come up against.
    
8. Daydream. Let your mind wander and see where it ends up.
    
9. Look at two things totally unrelated. Try to link them together in a new, innovative way.
    
10. Ask lots of questions — but then listen to the answers.
     
11. Ask new and different questions — ones that are unexpected, perhaps illogical, perhaps a little crazy, perhaps ones to make you think.
     
12. Try to come at a problem from an entirely new perspective.
     
13. Write all your ideas down. Don't let them get away.