Starting a business

This is a project plan for developing a course in planning for small business sustainably. The Starting a Business course will be a short, part time, blended course designed generically and available to anyone. It will use a text book, calendar of events, seminars and workshops to support the text, and a business plan pitching event to complete assessment and the course.

The text is based on the New Zealand Trade and Enterprise (NZTE) texts, Starting a business and Planning for Success. After negotiating copyright release, this project will expand on and add a practical sustainability framework, and create a new business plan template and guide called Sustainable Business. The Wikibook will be produced into a printed book,

The course will schedule seminars, workshops, lectures and tutorials to pace and support people in their efforts to follow the new text, learn about business planning and to complete a business plan via the template.

Assessment will follow New Zealand Unit Standards, with the completed business plan, along with a pitch made to an assessment panel, serving as the evidence for assessment.

Plans of excellence will be invited into business incubation by participating agencies, and/or investors.

=Objectives= Objectives cross out means objective achieved.
 * Meet with key stakeholders in Otago to check if the development of a new course by Otago Polytechnic is complimentary rather than competative to existing services and events
 * Find a text that is commonly used by existing services to guide new businesses and negotiate copyrights to make a derivative.
 * Write sections in the wikibook on sustainability planning, management, marketing and accounting
 * Publish the text online as well as in print with Creative Commons Attribution license
 * Develop a calendar or schedule of seminars, workshops, lectures and tutorials for 2009/2010
 * Develop a course page on Wikieducator, and a course blog for announcements and news.
 * Run the course on EFTS only (NZ Government funding) and offer the course for free to anyone who wants it.

=Development Plan= This project aims to:
 * 1) Produce a text developed in partnership between the NZTE, Centre for Sustainable Practices, Otago Polytechnic educational developers, and a local design business.
 * 2) Establish a schedule of workshops and seminars offered by the IRD, Otago Chamber of Commerce, Kick Start, Queenstown Resilient Business Programme, and Otago Polytechnic School of Applied Business
 * 3) Development a course at Otago Polytechnic's Educational Development Centre and School of Applied Business, and learning support services and facilitation by Otago Polytechnic's Community Learning Centres that is freely available to anyone and funded through EFTS.

Text
http://www.nzte.govt.nz/Common/Images/Starting-a-Business-Dec2007.jpg
 * Select a text that the existing services in Otago and New Zealand use to help people prepare and learn about business planning.
 * Negotiate copyrights on that text so Otago Polytechnic can create a derivative text and add sustainability topics.
 * Develop the derivative text and publish it with a Creative Commons Attribution license
 * Load the text to Wikibooks.org and order prints through PediaPress.

Schedule

 * Find out what business planning activities and events are already scheduled in and around Otago as well as online and develop a calendar for them.
 * Set up supplementary events where there are short falls needed for people to successfully complete the business plan template. Exploit existing services such as the Community Learning Centre's computing for free training.
 * Develop a course schedule that guides course participants to the events that help them to progress through the text and complete the business plan. Schedule includes regular meeting times with the course facilitator.

Links to local events
 * Audacious events

Course

 * Develop a course that facilitates people learning by way of the text and schedule, assessment both prior and after participation in the course, that offers "gap" training based on the outcomes of that assessment, and that can award a nationally and internationally recognised certificate for the completion of the assessment requirements.

=Budget=

=Progress notes=

January 2010

 * After significant delays in preparing a contract for an editor, we finally have Leanne Holdsworth on board, who is helping with the preparation of a framework for sustainable business.
 * An extension on the delivery of Milestone's 1-3 has been given by SMF
 * A first draft graphic design has been prepared.
 * The calendar of local events in Otago that would support people using the text has been delayed. We hope to contract in someone locally who can bring this together.

30 November

 * The project manager resigned from Otago Polytechnic, but accepted a contract to finish the text and the first 3 project milestones.

August

 * Otago Polytechnic Business School lecturer Chris Young, and Natural Step consultant Ella Lawton contracted to assist writing in sustainability content to the NZTE released texts

14 July
First stakeholder meeting was held, attended by:
 * 1) Dunedin City Council, Audacious business awards
 * 2) Department of Inland Revenue
 * 3) New Zealand Trade and Enterprise
 * 4) Otago Chamber of Commerce
 * 5) Otago Polytechnic's business school and community learning centres


 * Meeting notes here

9 July
Funding approved and contracts signed and sent. Meeting with stakeholders has been arranged for 11 am on Tuesday 14 July in the Common Room (cnr of Bath and George St Dunedin CBD) to touch base on the project plan and to try and find ways to compliment each other's efforts. Chris Young will be contracted as a lead editor on the NZTE based workbook, and starts by breaking down the structure of the NZTE text to its Chapters, sections and topics, ready for discussion about what sustainability topics fit in where.

5 June
Final plan and budget submitted to the Sustainable Management Fund. Here's a copy of the plan. Thanks to Eileen Delahunty from the Sustainable Management Fund team for her support in bringing this plan together.

17 March
Contacted by Sustainabale Management Fund to advise that our initial application was successful and that we are now in stage 2 where a Fund respresentative will assist us to develop a full proposal for the funding to develop this project.

2 March
Brigid Casey sent through the link to the Audacious Business Awards events calender. This link has been added to the section called "course" with the view that other calendars and events like this will be gathered so we can try and create a course schedule around them all.

24 February
No word from SMF yet, but Tracy Kennedy from the Fashion School has published a development plan that has potential synergy with this project - both in objectives and timing.

16 Jan 2009
Leigh Blackall is applying to the SMF for funding as per budget above, with necessary changes to meet SMF requirements.

31 Oct 2008
With assistance from Tamara Skevington from Dunedin NZTE, copyrights were negotiated between Otago Polytechnic and NZTE to permit Otago Polytechnic to make a derivative work from the Starting a Business text. That derivative will be released under a Creative Commons Attribution license.

15 Oct 2008
Leigh Blackall attended IRD's GST workshop and proposed to the workshop coordinator that Otago Polytechnic aimed to set up a calendar of free workshops and events like the IRD workshops, that would help people complete their business plans using the free text being developed. The IRD representative was supportive of the idea.

23 Aug 2008
Met with key stakeholders in Otago and determined that a new course targeting undergraduates at Otago Polytechnic would be appropriate and would assist the existing business development services in Otago. People agreed that the NZTE text was the best text to base the course on.

Aug 2008
Leigh Blackall, Educational Developer for Otago Polytechnic, has been working with Hillary Jenkins, Programme Manager for Travel and Tourism. In that programme is a course called Small Business Planning - this will run as a template course that other departments can use to prepare their students for planning and running a small business in their respective fields, post study.

External links and resources

 * Envirostep - tool to help businesses self evaluate their eco impact
 * Video: Starting a business in tough times. A short report from Television New Zealand TVNZ 1
 * Flight carbon calculator
 * Carbon trading interview - There's a great deal of unease across rural Australia about the cost farmers will bear when agriculture is eventually included in an emissions trading scheme.
 * Video - Financial permaculture - A documentary about the 1st Financial Permaculture Summit in Hohenwald, TN.
 * Wiki - Financial Permaculture
 * Information sheets - Financial Permaculture
 * Tennessee based course in Financial Permaculture: Business plan templates and information
 * Blog post and discussion: Financial Permaculture - What is it?
 * Fashion Production Loop
 * Crash Course - Ready to learn everything you need to know about the economy in the shortest amount of time? The Crash Course is a condensed online version of Chris Martenson's "End of Money" seminar.
 * The Story of Stuff - a 20-minute, fast-paced, fact-filled look at the underside of our production and consumption patterns.
 * Open Source Ecology - Open source scientific farming and engineering
 * Video explaining an open economic model
 * Factor e Farm - A five minute reader
 * Corporate Sustainability Reporting in New Zealand - A research paper looking into triple bottom line accounting
 * Global Reporting Initiative - Develops and disseminates globally applicable "Sustainability Reporting Guidelines" for voluntary use by organisations reporting on the economic, social and ecological bottom lines
 * Video - Capitalism hits the fan - a talk by Richard Wolff. Notes by Bill Kerr
 * Here's a Switch: Some Good News About Banking. Arianna Huffington, Posted April 13, 2009 Huffington Post. "And now for something completely different: some good news about banking."
 * Economic Value Added - An accounting formula that might help inform triple bottom line accounting