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Get clear career assessment : find the work you're wired to do
There's not an assessment out there that will tell you exactly what you should be doing. Instead, self-awareness is what points you in the direction of a fulfilling and growing career. That's what makes the Get Clear Career Assessment stand out from the rest-it gets to the heart of who you are and how you're wired. Now, it's paired with Ken Coleman's new book, Find the Work You're Wired to Do. Once you have a clear picture of the type of work you do best, Ken will show you how to use your results to get specific in your job search, grow in your career, and make more money doing work you enjoy. Here's what you'll discover with the Get Clear Career Assessment: Your top talents-what you do best, How you wow others, What others say about you, Talent traps to avoid, Your top passions-what you enjoy, Work you love to do, How to perform your passion, Passion pitfalls to avoid, Your top mission-the results you want to produce, Results that fire you up, How to accomplish your mission, Mission missteps, Your personalized purpose statement, A sentence that brings together your talents, passions and mission to summarize your strengths and help you get specific in your career direction. Then, in Find the Work You're Wired to Do, you'll: Understand what your results say about you and what to do with them Find out if you prefer working with people, processes, ideas or objects Narrow the search-clarify, verify and explore new job opportunities Self-discovery is like a compass that points you in the direction of the work you're made for-so you can stop wasting time in the wrong career. (Whew, that's a relief.) Let's get started!
Book
Rethinking competition-based entrepreneurship education in higher education institutions
Purpose: The purpose of this paper is to focus with the university-based business plan competition (BPC) and proposes how the theory of effectuation might inform a new model. Such a purpose is timely given the under-challenged nature of the BPC methodology. Design/methodology/approach: Extant literature pertaining to business planning and the business plan within entrepreneurship education and effectuation is reviewed; numerous conceptual issues which undermine BPC provision in its traditional form are then identified. In response to these identified issues, a series of principles which could underpin the introduction of an effectuation-led business coopetition (EBC) are outlined. Findings: Strong emphasis on business plan production within a conventional BPC model raises questions about its capacity to release the entrepreneurial potential of the higher education institution student and provide them with an authentic and relevant entrepreneurial learning experience. Through using the ideas of effectuation to rethink provision, the action of business plan production can usefully be replaced with the action of business implementation. As well as facilitate a beneficial shift from competition to coopetition-based entrepreneurship education. Originality/value: This paper valuably critiques the efficacy of a commonly employed yet under-challenged methodology for entrepreneurship education; the BPC. The propositions offered can guide competition provision in a more authentic, realistic and relevant way that is potentially better suited to inspiring and supporting entrepreneurial new venturing amongst students and graduates now rather than in the future. The paper thus has practical value to those designing and delivering competition-based entrepreneurship education.
Journal Article
Form or substance: the role of business plans in venture capital decision making
We explore a well-known instance of fast decision making under high uncertainty, venture capital (VC) opportunity screening. We analyze a sample of 722 funding requests submitted to an American VC firm and evaluate the influence of the form of the submission and content of business planning documents on VC funding decisions. We improve on prior literature by a) using a large sample of known representativeness, b) relating request characteristics to actual VC decisions, and c) developing an inferential logic that takes account of the multiple sources of information to which VCs have access. We find that the presence of planning documents and some information contained therein are weakly associated with VC funding decisions. Based on our inferential strategy, we find that this information is learned independently of its inclusion in the business planning documents.
Journal Article
Emergent perspectives toward the business plan among nascent entrepreneur start-up competition participants
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine how nascent entrepreneur perspectives towards the utility of the formal written business plan (BP) change before and after start-up competition (SUC) participation. Such focus is pertinent and timely given the enduringly contentious matter of BP creation for nascent entrepreneurs. Despite mounting criticisms, considerable resources continue to be expended on promoting the BP within educative and start-up support provision; the globally ubiquitous SUC phenomenon provides a prominent example of such promotion.
Design/methodology/approach
In-depth open-ended interviews were undertaken with nascent entrepreneurs at the start, end and six months after participation in a UK university-based SUC. An inductive thematic content analytical approach was taken to identify patterns across participant accounts at each wave of data collection.
Findings
Upon entering the competition, the nascent entrepreneurs held highly positive views towards the BP, believing that it provided legitimacy and served as a means of sense-making. Immediately after the competition, views were more ambivalent, with the BP viewed as secondary to action but remaining an external expectation. Six months after the competition, the BP was viewed as underutilised and internally irrelevant; an unnecessary feature of an action-led approach and only useful when needed by external parties.
Originality/value
Contributing to the limited body of SUC research, the enduring centrality of formal BP production within competition provision is challenged given its limited relevance to the nascent entrepreneur beyond the competition context. Emphasis on BPning within a competition need not automatically require BP creation; this has implications for business competition organisers.
Journal Article
Entrepreneurial competences in a higher education business plan course
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is twofold: first, to study which perceived and attained entrepreneurial competences acquired by students while developing a business plan are rated most highly; and second, to analyse the differences observed in entrepreneurial competences, depending on whether the business plan developed is real or fictitious.
Design/methodology/approach
To analyse the role played by business plans in perceptions and attainment of competence, data were collected from students enrolled on a final project course of a bachelor’s degree, specifically the Bachelor’s Degree in Business Administration and Management at the Universitat Oberta de Catalunya. The course in question focussed on entrepreneurship and business plans. The data on perceived and attained competences were obtained through questionnaires and assessment rubrics, respectively. Mean comparison analyses were conducted to investigate any differences in entrepreneurial competences existing between students developing real or fictitious business plans.
Findings
The paper finds evidence that the process of creating a business plan results in entrepreneurial competence being highly rated and that whether the business plan is real or fictitious does not affect the level of entrepreneurial competence.
Research limitations/implications
A longitudinal study will be required to analyse how entrepreneurial competences evolve during the business plan creation process.
Originality/value
This paper finds that few studies have been conducted to explore entrepreneurial competences in relation to business plan development and shows that more complete research is required. Moreover, both perceived and achieved competences are considered, an analysis not previously carried out.
Journal Article
Business plan competitions and nascent entrepreneurs: a systematic literature review and research agenda
Business plan competitions (BPCs) are opportunities for nascent entrepreneurs to showcase their business ideas and obtain resources to fund their entrepreneurial future. They are also an important tool for policymakers and higher education institutions to stimulate entrepreneurial activity and support new entrepreneurial ventures from conceptual and financial standpoints. Academic research has kept pace with the rising interest in BPCs over the past decades, especially regarding their implications for entrepreneurial education. Literature on BPCs has grown slowly but steadily over the years, offering important insights that entrepreneurship scholars must collectively evaluate to inform theory and practice. Yet, no attempt has been made to perform a systematic review and synthesis of BPC literature. Therefore, to highlight emerging trends and draw pathways to future research, the authors adopted a systematic approach to synthesize the literature on BPCs. The authors performed a systematic literature review on 58 articles on BPCs. Several themes emerge from the BPC literature, including BPCs investigated as prime opportunities to develop entrepreneurial education, the effects of BPC participation on future entrepreneurial activity, and several attempts to frame an ideal BPC blueprint for future contests. However, several research gaps emerge, especially regarding the lack of theoretical underpinnings in the literature stream and the predominance of exploratory research. This paper provides guidance for practice by presenting a roadmap for future research on BPCs drawing from the sample reviewed. From a theoretical perspective, the study offers several prompts for further research on the topic through a concept map and a structured research agenda.
Journal Article
From utility to necessity: the business plan as a multi-user tool for planning
The business plan (BP) has long been used in practice to summarise expected results and facilitate long-term planning. However, its actual value is still debated—while some view it as a bureaucratic tool driven by investor expectations, others recognise its strategic relevance for aligning internal decision-making and communicating with external stakeholders. This study addresses this tension by examining how practitioners across different domains—companies, banks, consultants and investment firms—perceive and use the BP in contemporary contexts. Drawing on 15 semi-structured interviews and analysed using the Gioia methodology, this research explores the evolution of the BP from a static reporting document to a dynamic, multi-user planning tool. Our findings reveal how the BP’s perceived utility varies depending on professional perspective and organisational context, and how it contributes to decision-making, coordination and strategic adaptation. This paper contributes to the literature by offering a practice-based perspective on the BP’s shifting role and by proposing an updated interpretive model that reflects its multifunctional nature.
Journal Article
The Street-Smart Side of Business
Have you ever thought about what it would be like to own your own business? Maybe you've given thought to how you can turn your passion into a career or maybe you just want to do something different. Most people have at least teetered with the idea–if you have, this is the book for you!
Wouldn't it be amazing to be able to have your income generated by something that you really enjoy or are interested in? It doesn't matter our age or where we are in our lives. We have the power to redirect, set new goals, and achieve them. We just have to be smart about it.
This book provides realistic insight as to what running a business is really about. It will help prepare you for all aspects of business and teach you how to protect yourself and your investment.
The simplicity of using our intuition is often overlooked. The point is to understand exactly what you're getting into and not be blinded by the appearance of a good opportunity. This book will open your eyes and show you how to evaluate opportunities, people, and motives–skills often overlooked but are critical aspects of owning and operating a successful business.
Prepare to get in tune with your \"street smarts\" in order to be successful in business and in life.
eBook
Translating knowledge in new entrepreneurial ventures: the role of business plan development
Purpose
This paper aims to analyse the role of business plan development as a knowledge translation tool, especially for the creation of start-ups. In a complex knowledge ecosystem populated by multiple diverse and autonomous actors (such as potential entrepreneurs, local companies, local public entities and business consultants) bonded together by a joint search for valuable knowledge, business plan development can work as a powerful enabler for the translation of knowledge.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses a qualitative multi-case study approach by examining the results of a public programme devoted to the creation of new entrepreneurial ventures. The authors analysed 418 complete business plans and followed up with all the participants with an interview. In total, 40 cases were investigated more in detail.
Findings
Results show how business plan development can function as a bridge between academic, theoretical and general knowledge on start-up creation on the one hand and practical contextualised activities of potential entrepreneurs on the other.
Practical implications
The process of knowledge translation is crucial to ensure that relevant knowledge coming from both the inside (the entrepreneur) and outside (the stakeholders) of the organisation is effectively applied. To facilitate the translation process, key knowledge users should be supported in contextualising and making sense of the research knowledge. Initiatives carried out by local entities and other actors, gathering several stakeholders to develop business plans, can become valuable opportunities to facilitate the translation process for start-up development.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to knowledge management and knowledge translation literature by demonstrating the role of business plan development as an effective knowledge translation enabler. It also adds to the understanding of innovation management and entrepreneurial education by proving the relevance of the translation of knowledge for the creation of new business ventures.
Journal Article
Co-Developing Business Plans for Upscaled Coastal Nature-Based Solutions Restoration: An Application to the Venice Lagoon (Italy)
Upscaling coastal nature-based solutions (NbSs), from the river to sea scale, essential to the ultimate success of restoration, requires larger investments, greater socio-economic engagement and a transformative shift in governance. Consequently, the ability to catalyze blended finance from public and private investors through business model innovation and accessibly written long-range business plans is imperative. This research proposes a methodology to systematically co-design, through iterative stakeholder engagement, suitable and effective business models for upscaling NbSs coastal restoration, as well as a framework to develop business plans adaptable to different investors needs and financial criteria. This method was tested and validated in a saltmarsh restoration project coordinated by public agencies in the Venice Lagoon. It delivered an advanced business model canvas, carefully assessed through a stakeholder questionnaire and a related business case centered on ecotourism complemented by a willingness-to-pay analysis. The resulting business plan lays out the governance, management, business and financial strategies for successful restoration, addressing specific interconnected issues, improving five main ecosystem services and delivering NbS multifunctional environmental, economic, social and cultural benefits. The methodology has proven to be applicable beyond the Venice Lagoon saltmarsh case and types of restoration projects.
Journal Article