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Managing the Five Risks you face at all stages of your business development:

1. growth risk

2. technology & production risk

3. marketability & competing risk

4. financial risk

5. team & management risk

Turn Risks into Opportunities

4.

Roll Out

- limited product revenue; proven technology being applied to the market

Organization: Simple

Management:  Entrepreneurial

Technology: Proven

Funding Stage: Early

pp.

Problem

Solution

Action

4.1

Growth Risk:

• Moving from an incubation phase into the real world environment

• Need to meet market laws and regulations

• Lack of focus

• Thorough business planning

• Development of full-scale commercial production units supportive organizational structures

• Compliance with market practices, laws and regulations

• Avoid the 10 deadly small business mistakes; learn 9 secrets to boost your small business performance

• Make a Strength - Weaknesses - Opportunities - Threats (SWOT) analysis

• Prepare different type of a business plan (BP):

  • Technology roll-out BP

  • Market positioning BP

  • Manufacturing based BP

  • Sales oriented BP

  • Issue or problem solving BP

• Study modern production system (see slide show) and develop an effective full-scale value chain

• Keep flexible - spot what goes wrong and turn error to advantage

4.2

Technology Risk:

• Scaling up of production facilities

• Not developing unique market-driven product attributes

• Technology adaptation based on the market reaction to the preliminary product marketing

• Establishment of full-scale production facilities

• Learn from experiences of other companies

• Go for inside (alpha-) and early customer (beta-) testing of your product

• Fix major problems based on the tests

• Prioritize problems and address/fix the right ones

• Use external expert advice

• Design and establish production facilities

4.3

Marketability Risk:

• Real life product marketing is quite different from test marketing of few prototypes

• Low market acceptance

• Big competitor counter-punch

• You can't know in advance where the right fit will be

• Low repeat business

• Cost pressures on quality of product or customer service

• Clear and realistic market-oriented product specifications and shape

• Planning and running of marketing, advertising and selling processes

• Development of marketing partnerships (see slide show)

• Approach as many prospective customers as possible and learn from them (the more negative answers you get initially the faster and better you learn and enhance your marketing skills, and finally, start selling)

• Find situations where the product "fits" specific real customer prospects in the targeted market

• Develop realistic marketing concept, and marketing, advertising and selling strategy

• Reassess and adjust your marketing plan, make a sales forecast

• Develop innovative product selling customer relationship chain

• Leverage your service-profit chain to gain repeated customers

• Launch marketing campaign; develop your sales network

• Expand your contacts in the marketplace, build strategic alliances

• Revise your competitive strategy. Use the competitive war games approach to simulate the competitive environment, identify weaknesses, and make critical changes that produce a more complete and effective competitive strategy

4.4

Financial Risk:

• High cash burn rate per month

• Inadequate capital

• Negative balances; cash outflow exceeding inflow

• Poor turnover of assets

• Emphasis on sales vs. profits

• Optimizing reorganization, production and product launch costs

• Raising of venture capital (first round) for implementation commercial-scale manufacturing and sales plan (see slide show)

• Lease equipment instead of buying

• Focus on cashflow, capital, and controls - not profits

• Minimize costs by establishing lean production systems

• Select type of finance you require and develop your fund raising strategy

• Explore opportunities for getting government subsides

• Study investment opportunity selection criteria of different types of investors (see slide show)

• Introduce your project to prospective investors

• Negotiate the agreement wits investors and take a professional help to structure the deal

4.5

Team & Management Risk:

• Upgrading fast without assessing needs, alternatives and employees

• Not knowing what to expect

• Dismissing turbulence

• Not hiring people who fit the values and the culture

• Not being able to change your style to fit the stage of development

• Denial of internal feedback

• Delegating to gain control

• Establishing management systems enabling better control, transparency, and customer relationships

• Developing employee empowerment and reward mechanisms

• Developing formal professional management structures

• Invent and master venture managing tactics

• Build an innovation-friendly organization

• Set the direction and stay the course

• Articulate your vision/values

• Hire multi-talented people with your values, educate, empower, and share responsibilities with them

• Delegate roles and responsibilities

• Measure performance; track key indicators

• Devise effective reward system

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