What you will study
The course comprises eight units:
Unit 1: Introduction and context to creating business
In this first unit you'll look at the fundamentals of creating a business, how it has evolved and where it is headed in the future. You'll also understand the right mindsets and culture required to embrace new business design and creation.
Unit 2: Business mindset
Here we explore the strategic fit phase whilst uncovering your fundamental driving purpose and personal ‘why’ in order to ensure your new business venture is aligned with your personal values and intrinsic motivations.
Unit 3: Your business purpose
You'll uncover your own personal mission and vision and learn to articulate the key phases of the business creation process linked to global issues like sustainability and the circular economy. You'll also learn how to map new business opportunity spaces linked to your personal motivators and why mission.
Unit 4: Solving needs and problems
We introduce design thinking and consider techniques for understanding at a deeper level the needs, wants and problems that customers have. We go on to show how to test alternative possible solutions through the use of various “How might we" statements.
Unit 5: Generating business ideas
We look at how creative thinking diverges and converges during the ideation phase for new business creation. You'll learn how to conduct the ideation process to arrive at an original range of solutions that firmly address the needs and problems of your target customer audience and how to make quick decisions about which ideas to take forward into early concepts to test and validate with your customers and buyers.
Unit 6: Rapid prototyping and testing business ideas
By the end of this unit, you'll know how to identify the most impactful problem-solving features from your customer perspective to solve their needs and problems. You'll be able to design specific experiments to test the desirability of the specific features within your new business concept. You will have mastered the process of conducting solution interviews in order to gain objective feedback on how your proposed concepts solve the needs and problems of your clients or users.
Unit 7: Designing new business models
You'll learn to build new business model prototypes quickly by considering the type of values you intend to create, deliver and capture to support your business concept. You'll learn how to create new business model prototypes ready to test and validate with your customers and stakeholders. You'll also understand how to make early-stage market revenue potential calculations to inform how you should modify your monetisation strategy.
Unit 8: Testing new business models
Here we uncover the most critical business model assumptions carrying the highest degree of risk and uncertainty. You'll be able to reduce uncertainty by making informed, evidence-based decisions from real validation rather than gut feelings, opinion and instinct. You'll have learned how to design concrete experiments quickly and cheaply to uncover how your new business model will operate and function in reality.
You will learn
By completing this course you will be able to:
- identify new business opportunities aligned with your personal drivers for change and your individual purpose motivations
- understand how the business design and innovation process functions as a repeatable, iterative process to deliver the right kind of value to your customers
- uncover customer needs and problems to solve through the business creation process
- create new business ideas and supporting business models to test and iterate through prototypes with your intended customers and stakeholders
- track key success metrics and key performance indicators as you move towards market implementation and scaling your business.
Learner support
Expert, confidential learner support is available when you need it from a learning adviser, who will respond to you directly. Other support is available via the course forum, dedicated website and computing helpdesk
Work-based activity
There is a Practice-Based Assignment (PBA) which you complete at the end of the course to demonstrate how you have applied, or are intending to apply, the theories and models you have learnt. Once completed and successfully passed you will receive a digital badge and a course completion certificate which you can download as a record of your learning.