Note: This project can be done in your main group, or, if your group has too many disagreements or meeting is particularly inconvenient, a scaled-down version can be done in smaller sub-groups or by individuals. Please discuss your plans with me and your group if you plan to do a scaled-down version. The length I would expect will be shorter than the suggested lengths below if you work in a smaller group or by yourself.
This assignment is for you to develop a "Technology Business Plan," a rather definitive treatment of how an organization should proceed on a specific technological innovation that you propose, using a 5-year time horizon.
A good way to think of this is that you should prepare a 12-18 page "business case" for an innovative use of Information Technology by the organization five years from now. This use should be either a completely new product/service or represent a substantially different way of offering something it is currently doing.
The purpose of this assignment is for you to think carefully about technology, but at the same time to consider a wide range of business issues that apply to the organization. Only you can make some of these assessments, based on your knowledge of the organization. By working through such an analysis, you would be better able to adapt this approach to other innovations in the future.
Projects and presentations of the projects are due at the beginning of the final class session. Place the projects in Blackboard in the Digital Dropbox. Make sure you SUBMIT the project, don’t simply ADD it.
There are five particularly critical ideas to cover. Please include a clearly-labeled section for each.
1. The Context. (5% of the grade; about 1-2 pages) Describe just enough of the organization and its environment to set the stage for the innovation. What are some of the problems that would motivate the innovation? You might need to also describe a little about the organization's industry partners for the reader to understand the goals of this project. This section should be about a half of a page to a page long, but your particular situation might be substantially more complex and require a little more space. Please do not go overboard here; an entire history is not needed. Just stick to the interesting and relevant items.
2. The Technology. (10% of the grade; about 2-3 pages) Explain the basic technology that would be employed, with sufficient detail to be simultaneously instructive and convincing of the technical feasibility of your proposed solution. While you should not choose a technology that is obviously impossible (for example, time travel), you should certainly feel free to "push the envelope" (for example, if your situation dictated the need for a robot as shown in the video in class, you can assume that within 5 years there would be substantial progress in the tool, and use your imaginations about that progress).
Highlight the impacts on the current technology infrastructure you described above, and for any of the firm's industry partners too. Also describe how the technology would be used by all affected parties.
3. The Competitive Environment. (30% of the grade; about 3-4 pages) Address competitors, customers, and powerful trading partners as applicable. Who are likely competitors and what are their possible responses? How will the customer base be affected? If you believe there are no competitors or customers, you might want to reassess that assumption in a very thoughtful manner. Perhaps you will need to focus more on the third category: the reactions of your powerful trading partners. Another possibility would be to consider substitute goods as one of your competitors. Be aggressive and entrepeneurial, but be realistic about the competition, customers, and powerful trading partners. Provide a brief analysis of sustainability of any competitive advantage.
4. The Economics. (30% of the grade; about 3-4 pages) Demonstrate that your plan is economically feasible. Document in as much detail as possible the sources and impacts of value to the organization from your plan as well as the costs involved. Outline the best-case, worst-case, and likely-case costs of your proposal. If you do not have much financial information about the company or if you will need to purchase technologies that do not exist today, you might have to make some wild guesses about costs. That is perfectly fine, as long as you follow the guidelines in the next paragraph. If your business partners are affected, outline any economic impacts.
Indeed, the nature of this assignment dictates that some costs will be difficult to assess. Please feel free to guess, but document your guesses and anchor them in reality as best you can. That is, provide some explanation of the source of your projections. For example, "Except for the three estimates on lines 4 through 6, the amounts in Table 1 are taken from current operations, adjusted for inflation by X% per year." The three estimates are based on the following sources...") Your basis for estimates can be made by examining costs of similar or current versions of related technologies, discussions with the firm's IT director, discussions with technology vendors, etc.
Provide both adequate tables and narrative that show precisely the expected inflows and/or outflows resulting from this project. Do not devote a great deal of space to current operations, but make sure you indicate clearly incremental costs or benefits. That is, if you provide an income statement or analysis of cash flow, label clearly the incremental amounts and differentiate them clearly from overall results. One excellent way to accomplish this is to provide a column for your estimated results, a column for current operations, and a third column showing the differences.
5. The Organizational implementation. (25% of the grade; about 3-4 pages) Finally, assess the likelihood that the organization will be able to implement your plan successfully. Document what you expect are the critical success factors for the implementation. List and develop the major risks to success and how you plan to mitigate them. You should consider all parties and identify risks from the behavior of competitors, customers, trading partners, and even your own executive, managerial, and operational personnel. Feel free to relate the risks to the alternative scenarios identified above in #4. Describe contingency plans for those risks that you deem most likely. Provide a timeline and a plan for implementation.