This week at UWE we welcomed Dave Jarman, the Head of Enterprise Education at the University of Bristol to facilitate a session on creativity in research. Here’s some thoughts from Dave about how important creativity is in the business of research.
The Creative Researcher session explores the basic principles of creative and innovative thought and their importance for researchers. As researchers and as products of traditional education programmes we often prize critical and analytical thought very highly – but the ability to suspend critical thought is integral to generating creative thoughts from which truly innovative applications can arise. Too often we seek the ‘right answer’ which usually leads us exactly where everyone else has gone before – if we’re trying to find something original we have to look where others do not.
As a result creativity involves a different approach; partially an internal one – giving yourself permission to make mistakes, to explore the ridiculous, to follow your curiosity down possible dead-ends, and to stretch yourself into ‘uncomfortable’ and unfamiliar territories. But the external environment also has an impact; creativity thrives in resource-rich and diverse networks. You need stimulation, connections, and an environment conducive to exploration to generate creative ideas and experiment with them.
The WordPress.com stats helper monkeys prepared a 2013 annual report for this blog.
Here’s an excerpt:
The concert hall at the Sydney Opera House holds 2,700 people. This blog was viewed about 8,400 times in 2013. If it were a concert at Sydney Opera House, it would take about 3 sold-out performances for that many people to see it.
This week we ran a workshop to introduce the changes to the process of submitting a doctoral thesis at UWE. From September 2013, all doctoral candidates are required to submit an electronic version of their final thesis alongside a hard bound copy. The context of this is to make it easier for anyone to access the research outputs from universities – the open access agenda which I wrote about here.
We invited the managers of the UWE Research Repository, Alex Clarke and Anna Lawson to explain a bit more about how the repository came about and how to deposit a thesis. Here are their supporting slides.
In October 2012 in the Graduate School at UWE we started running a new module for doctoral students that we hoped might enhance their experience of personal and professional skills development. Perhaps a bit ambitiously, we hoped it might help solve a number of commonly perceived challenges including; the separation of research and skills development activity, the provision of credit for the full range of skills development activities and the delivery of skills development for students who spend most of their time away from the university. The module is called ‘Research in Contemporary Context (RCC)’ and we used ‘Work-Based Learning’ modules at UWE to inspire its design as a ‘Research-Based Learning’ module. The module booklet with details and an introductory ppt are embedded below – what follows are some thoughts of how we designed it and how we run it.
Work-based learning embeds learning in a workplace. It usually involves an interaction between work activity and university-based sessions that results in the development of professional competencies. It’s widely used to deliver professional practice qualifications. We reasoned that there was an analogy with doctoral students developing skills – their research was their work and skills development their university-based sessions, which should interact to develop professional competencies expected in researchers. A potential catch was that we needed a set of professional competencies to provide a framework – which we quickly realized could be Vitae’s Researcher Development Framework.
The Vitae Researcher Development Framework
So, here’s what we do. We have six 3 hour Professional Practice workshops dedicated to RCC on topics we have chosen to match some of the descriptors on the RDF. We also ask that students identify 6 workshops from the UWE Skills Development series. The default module run for students on the module is 2 years and 10 months, i.e. from when they register they have this long to do all the workshops. This is so that students can do workshops when they coincide with relevant phases of their research. Before each Professional Practice workshop we use Blackboard to make material available to students. We then run the workshop with both actual and remote attendance, after which students return to their ‘workplace’, i.e. research. Before the end of their run, students must submit a Reflective Portfolio of evidence for each workshop topic in action in their research or research discipline, and an in depth case study of one of them. If these are satisfactory they are then awarded 30 M level professional practice credits. We chose a Reflective Portfolio because we felt that reflection would not only encourage topics to seem alive in student research but also because most of them were best engaged with by doing them or seeing them in action, reflecting on them, and doing again, i.e. they were based in practice. The advice we give is below.
How does this help with skills development? First, we hope that it embeds thinking about professional practice and skills development in student research, breaking down the feeling that students take time out to do these as separate activities. It also involves supervisors in skills development because students talk to them about it and they help with assessment at the end. Second, students get credits for activities that map directly onto the RDF. We think this not only helps with engagement but also provides a concrete, professional development outcome from the time spent. Third, by providing fully interactive remote access to workshops that support research-based learning, and having students submit their Portfolio electronically via Blackboard, a student can complete the module without having to travel to the university. At UWE more than 50% of our students are PT, and FT students are located on a number of campuses and frequently research off campus, so this has met a real need. In addition, we record workshops so that students can watch them at any time, reminding them of topics as they see them in action.
And finally, we have students from across all disciplines taking the module. This has made for very interesting discussions on many topics and enabled students to meet a wider variety of researchers than they do in, for example, their research group or centre. It’s still early days but we feel that our ‘Research In Contemporary Context’ module is an interesting attempt to overcome some of the challenges of delivering skills development to busy, and often disperse, doctoral students.
At the beginning of July, Plymouth University in collaboration with UWE, Bristol put on a four day residential course for doctoral researchers at the fabulous Buckland Hall in the Brecon Beacons. This course is designed to give researchers the time and space to reflect on their development to date and to spend time in the company of other researchers thinking about where their research might take them. The overall theme of the course was “Building a reputation as a researcher”. Running through the programme were several topics that underpin this; communication of research, collaboration with others and understanding what drives you as a researcher.
Here is an outline programme that gives a flavour of what we were doing.
A big part of the success of this event is the venue itself, it really does make a difference to how the participants react. An interesting venue historically, Buckland Hall is now operated as a retreat/wedding venue. What’s great about it is that with groups the size that we have (36 researchers and a team of around 8 staff) you get exclusive use. The staff are brilliant achieving the seemingly impossible balance between being terribly efficient, catering for all your needs yet being almost out of sight the entire stay. As a course organiser I can’t tell you how valuable that is! The other feature of this venue is the ethos, the place runs on trust – trust bar, no room keys, treat the place as your own etc. and the organic vegetarian cuisine.
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Having the right venue is one thing but you have to come up with a programme that is right for your participants. We’ve a lot of experience running these type of courses (since 2003 in fact) and many of them have been based on the renowned Vitae GRADSchool model.
Over the past few years we have been hacking the format in part because of the diverse nature of our participants who on average tend to be older, international and from a wide range of disciplines. A further success factor in a course like this is a good balance of facilitators who understand doctoral researchers and their research.
Course team L-R Julia Crocker, Chris Russell, Helen Frisby, Mandy Burns, Neil Willey and Sarah Kearns
Introduction
The majority of the participants on this course arrived on the coach that we laid on (from Plymouth via Bristol). No sooner than they had arrived then they were faced with me introducing them to the next four days. Here’s that slideshow.
Like most courses you go on, the majority of your fellow participants are not known to you so inevitably there is a need to spend some time ingratiating yourself with others. We achieved this by doing three basic things; 1) running an icebreaker (building a giraffe), 2) establishing ‘home’ groups and 3) running an interview workshop.
Monday
How to build a giraffe!
Day 1 summary
The idea behind the interview workshop, given the demographic of the participants, was to run it as a familiarisation of each others research exercise rather than a full on “this is how you perform at interviews”. I think that this worked, some folks certainly appreciated the chance to practice talking about their research and others found it fascinating to observe others being interviewed.
Day 2. Connecting with others
There were three main things covered on the second day, some grounding principles in communicating research (start with why), establishing buddy pairs and the collaboration challenge.
Day 2
Day 2 summary
I started out the day by showing a short TED talk by Steven Addis. The take home message from this wasn’t about photography but rather to become aware of how our perspectives on things change over time and that we should be proactive in thinking about where it takes us.
I then spoke about communicating research and the need to be clear about the “why” of your research, that it is important to be able to make your work accessible and that the easiest way to do that was to use stories. Simon Sinek featured heavily in my presentation because I think his model of communication works just as well for academic researchers. Here’s the slides I used to support this session:
Along with focussing on the why I also made the assertion that “Storytelling is everything“. A video that helps convey that is by Scott Berkun who is talking about a fast paced presentation format called “Ignite” (a derivative of Pecha Kucha).
The afternoon session was facilitated by Neil Willey who is an experienced researcher who has and is working on a number of large collaborative research projects. Participants used the statements they generated in the morning to propose a research project involving multiple discplines.
Day 3. Motivations and communicating in an accessible way
There was a change of pace on the third day of the course to something more introspective. It was known that tackling the subject of motivations and values is risky which presents a difficulty in how to pitch it to a diverse audience. For me it was important to explore for the following reasons; reconnecting with your motivation to follow a research path is beneficial during a doctorate when things aren’t going so well, it is also good to understand “what feeds your soul” when thinking about future career choices. I also believe that it is good to recognise why you do what you do (helps the communication thing!).
We spent some time introducing the concept of Social Enterprise to set up the session on the final day. This dovetails neatly with the exploration of motivations and values and also opens up a horizon for researchers that they may not have considered before. Here’s a few resources that cover what I had to say.
Facts and figures about social enterprise in the UK
The concept of social entrepreneurship – tackling challenges across the globe
Why social enterprise makes sense.
The 2 minute thesis
In the afternoon we changed gear and Sarah Kearns handed the groups a video camera with only one instruction: Go away and draft, rehearse and record your thesis in a 2 minute presentation.
This session is aimed at raising awareness of social enterprise, a different way of doing business, for researchers. It is a case study that I, with the help of two colleagues Paul Toombs and Janet Wilkinson, authored back in 2010 and made available nationally through Vitae. The thinking behind this is that there are many attributes shared by social entrepreneurs and researchers; both are passionate problem solvers, both are motivated by making a difference, both are extremely resilient to challenges and hurdles. I used the following slides to introduce the session.
On Tuesday of this week I attended the Research and Enterprise Conference held at Southampton Solent University (#SSURE13). I had been invited to speak on social innovation, enterprise and researchers based on some of my previous work in this area. It was nice to be asked to contribute my thoughts on the topic, recognition I suppose for the enthusiasm I have for social innovation and how researchers can contribute to that agenda.
I had a mixed audience comprising of doctoral students, academics and professional support staff and so I tried to cover what I believe to be important to the success of researchers. The slides I used to support my talk are embedded below.
I started out by introducing a few of the phrases that I was going to cover – about half of the audience had heard of the term “social enterprise” and only a minority had an understanding of the term “social innovation“. I also talked a bit about what I think is important both personally (what I stand for) and professionally (who I am). I then highlighted the important outcome of a doctoral degree, that of a skilled researcher. I argued that most of the skills acquired by researchers occur as a natural consequence of working on a research project and that the role of skills developers like myself was to help researchers to understand what is happening to them, to encourage them to recognise the importance of this development and to find a vocabulary to communicate this to others. The Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF) is a useful tool to help researchers contextualise this development journey.
I then focussed on the development of enterprise skills with doctoral researchers – how the typical stereotype of a researcher is one of a lack of commercial awareness, a naivety with respect to how private sector organisations operate. I suggested that this is an unfair representation of the state of play, more that researchers do understand profit maximising business models but are just not inspired by that approach and are motivated by other factors.
I believe that most researchers are motivated by their research endeavours, to make a contribution to the body of knowledge, to generate new ideas that make some sort of difference to the world in which we live. Rarely are researchers motivated by being rich and famous! This led me to talk about why I believe that social enterprise is a pretty good vehicle to engage researchers with the idea that generation of profit is not necessarily a bad thing, that different models of business can generate social value and make that all important difference to society. I used this video, “Society Profits”, produced by Social Enterprise UK to illustrate my point.
It has been said that the key criteria for success in social enterprise are Resources,Expertise,Passion, and Contribution. My experience of talking to many social entrepreneurs is that the Passion and the motivation to make the Contribution are the key drivers to making the “social” bit of the social enterprise work and that the skills, expertise and general nous about how to run a business are things that can be learned if not already known. It is for this reason that I think researchers would be well placed to start a social enterprise should they choose to.
I then moved on to explain that social enterprise is just one way of tackling some of the social/environmental problems we face and that it is one strand of a much larger concept, social innovation. I started by talking about Professor Muhammad Yunus and the journey he started in the 1970s that began the microfinance movement. I used the following video to support that…
Social innovation isn’t new, it is a concept that has been around for quite some time although I believe that the term and the challenges we face as a society have brought about a renewed interest and explosion of activity. I used one (of many) definitions of social innovation to make a point about the place that researchers and universities have in this endeavour.
Therefore, I posit that universities are indeed organisations whose primary purposes are social and that the research undertaken within is inherently motivated by the goal of meeting a social need. Research is a key strand of social innovation and, more importantly, researchers have a valuable set of skills, knowledge, attributes to bring to the table in collaboration with others in order to tackle the grand challenges.
I ended my talk by referring back to the quote from Peter Drucker …
The problem in my life and other people’s lives is not the absence of knowing what to do, but the absence of doing it.
Researchers are often not short of great ideas, they are fantastic problem solvers. Though sometimes, just sometimes, we need to be reminded that we have to implement the ideas to make that difference in society.
Further links/resources
Vitae – National organisation supporting the skills development of researchers http://www.vitae.ac.uk/
Today I delivered a workshop at UWE entitled “How to win funds & influence people“. This is an event aimed squarely at researchers who are wanting to know a bit more about the process of applying for research funding, an introduction if you like as opposed to a masterclass in bidding.
I started the day by asking the participants where they wanted to go with their career – something that one might think is obvious to most – but I’ve found that many researchers have no real understanding of their options and wish to remain in academic research as a default position as recently highlighted in a report from Vitae – “Straight Talking”
The realities of academic research
I pointed to the reality of being an employed researcher on a research-only contract by highlighting some of the criteria required in the role profiles illustrating the point that getting involved in writing bids for research funding at the earliest opportunity is advantageous if not expected. It also served the purpose of making research students aware of the difference between postgraduate research study (oh the halcyon days!) versus some of the harsher realities of working as a paid researcher.
How is research funding distributed in the UK?
I then summarised where money for research comes from, I’ve written about this more extensively here, to try and raise awareness of this. I remember not being remotely aware of the sources for funding as a postgraduate researcher but actually I believe it is more important than ever to get a handle on this. It’s one thing to have an understanding about the funding bodies but it is quite another to really understand the politics involved as well.
Here’s a really useful factsheet that explains how funding for research in the UK works, it’s well worth a read.
Next up came an explanation of costing – now this isn’t something I am a particular expert in – but I offered this fundamental truth to researchers:
There is a difference between how much a research project costs to do and how much the funder will pay (the price)
I know many experienced academics who still don’t understand this, it is fundamental to informing how you would put a bid together in terms of asking for resources. I’d encourage all researchers to start thinking about this and seek out the advice. The Research Whisperer blog is a great place to start.
All flippancy aside, it’s amazing how many folks ignore what the funders say they will resource in what area and when so ignore at your peril.
Searching for the right funding opportunity
I then gave an overview of a database that UWE subscribes to, Research Professional. We discussed hints & tips on how to get the best of the search function (start broad with topics then narrow in) and how to set up automated alerts to ease the burden.
Making Connections
We finished off the day by focussing on a further fundamental truth about research funding:-
Collaboration is where it’s at
More and more research funding is being awarded to collaborative ventures. This means it is imperative that you build up a reputation as researcher to make it easier to find other researchers to work with.
This brought up the topic of networking. I decided to approach this from a slightly different perspective, rather than advising folks to get out there and press the flesh (which is the standard take on networking) I empathised with the notion of being a shy connector as set out by Sacha Chua.
Her presentation on networking as an introvert speaks volumes…
I also showed the TED talk by Susan Cain about how it’s harder (takes more energy) for introverts to interact in a world geared up for extroverts… (more info on introverts/extroverts)
So there it is, an introduction to research funding in 10 points:-
1) Do you want to be an academic researcher?
2) If so, applying for funding is integral to the job/success
3) Understand the funding landscape
4) Start small and build your track record
5) There is a difference between how much research costs and how much will be paid for (price)
6) The funder determines the price
7) So remember the 3 Rs (Read the guidelines! x 3)
8) Get into the habit of horizon scanning for funding opportunities
9) Find conference funding and put yourself out there
10) You can’t do this alone, collaboration is where it’s at
Questions, thoughts are most welcome. Maybe you have some advice to share with aspiring researchers?
If ideas seem hard to find or if inspiration is far away, here are seven tips to get your brain cells working again.
1. Have Lots Of Ideas. Instead of settling on the first idea that you think of, have lots of ideas. Don’t just take my word for it: Linus Pauling said that the secret to having good ideas was to have lots of them, and then pick the best ones. Linus Pauling won the Nobel Prize twice, which puts him on my list of People To Be Listened To.
2. Don’t Judge Your Ideas Too Soon. When you have an idea, resist the urge to put it under the microscope immediately. Instead of thinking, “Hmm, would this work?” or “Ah, but this is flawed because…” just record it and move on to thinking about the next idea. Once you have a lot of ideas you will have things that you can compare, and that’s when you can start evaluating their suitability for the situation.
3. Write Your Ideas Down. Seriously. Whether you’re spending time to come up with ideas or just happen to think of something neat when you’re walking down the street, make a note of it. There are some good apps for this on smartphones (Google Keep is relatively new and I like it) but go old school. You know what doesn’t run out of battery? A small notebook and pen.
4. Practice Practice Practice. My maths teacher used to have “The mind is a muscle and must be exercised” written on his classroom wall. And he’s right. OK, maybe not in an anatomical sense, but metaphorically he’s right. If you don’t practice being creative, you lose your ability to see patterns and connections that lead to new ideas. Take time each week to do something creative – something which forces you to do new things.
5. Work Within Constraints. Forget the Blue Sky! If you open your mind totally then often there is way too much to take in, way too many options to draw from. Give yourself constraints. For example, “Ten minutes to come up with ideas” or “I’m going to fill this sheet with ideas.” If you are starting a business and want to think about how to make money or serve people, add a constraint to start your thinking. “I know I want to help everyone, but what if I was just helping ONE person. What would I do?” Take what you would do with that one person, and then expand, see where it takes you.
6. Be Curious. Magpies like shiny things. They can’t help it, they’re just attracted to them. One way to be creative is to take an interest in lots of things. Explore. Find out about stuff that interests you, and find out about stuff that seems weird and strange. This makes more and more potential in your brain, and when you come to tackle problems your mind has more possible connections for making new ideas. Be like a magpie.
7. When You’re Coming Up With Ideas, Ask Questions. What if this was big? What if it was small? What if money was no object? What if we needed to do this today? What could we do with no money? What already exists that would meet this need? What would someone else do? When you ask a question, your mind reaches for an answer. Answers are ideas. Ideas have movement value – maybe they’re not perfect, maybe they’re not right – but they move in a direction, they take you somewhere.
Don’t be afraid to let your ideas take you somewhere!
I’m obviously not the only one because there are others who want folks to challenge the conception that powerpoint presentations are inherently dull and boring affairs. Probably the best known example of this is a presentation format known as Pecha Kucha.
This is a fast paced format where the speaker is given 20 slides that automatically advance every 20 seconds that creates a maximum presentation length of 6 minutes and 40 seconds. Originally devised by architects Astrid Klein and Mark Dytham as a way of encouraging architects to stick to the point, it has become a global sensation. It has spawned a number of other similar formats, e.g. Ignite, all of which put a focus on telling an interesting story but just quickly.
I have never prepared and delivered a Pecha Kucha before so when asked recently to deliver one at the South West & Wales Vitae Good Practice Event, I thought I had better practice what I preached. I survived and wanted to share my experience of the challenges involved in preparing a pecha kucha.
Challenge #1. Pronunciation
One of the first things I learned is that I have been saying pecha kucha incorrectly! Looking at the spelling, my Western brain interprets the two words as having four syllables of equal length leading to one to pronounce it:
Peh – Cha; Koo- cha
However it is a Japanese term for “chit chat” and native speakers pronounce it rather differently; more like three syllables with an emphasis on the middle syllable.
Pe – Chak – cha
The best presentations are stories that get folks emotionally involved. This statement doesn’t often sit well with researchers with their caveats and verbose explanations of detailed investigation but really it is. I even spotted an article in a blog of the well respected academic journal Nature talking about this very point. So regardless of the topic, you have to think “what’s the story?” and regale it with some enthusiasm.
If we have a look at an example Ignite talk (20 slides advancing every 15 seconds!) by Scott Berkun, he says everything I want to about storytelling…
Challenge #3. Storyboarding
If you look at a few examples of pecha kucha, you’ll notice that the slides are mostly pictures. But before you go off hunting for gorgeous photos from around the internet…stop…and think. What are my key points I want to make? How am I going to turn that into a story?
Plan it out using a good ol’ pencil and paper – think about the ebb and flow of your story. Only then will you be in the right place to go looking for the pictures that act as an aid to your story. Remember, storytelling is everything.
Challenge #4. Timing
The slides automatically advance. This is scary because you feel a loss of control and that tends to make people speed up. So, remember you will probably lose your first and last slides to a variety of things – so condense down the message to its absolute key points. Why are you passionate, why should I care, how will this change things. There is also a temptation to keep looking at the slides to see when they change to the next one, often resulting in you pausing as it transitions. I think one should try to keep your story flowing and let the slides carry on – it’ll work out just fine!
Challenge #5. Imagery
It takes longer than you think to track down photo images that are the right fit. Things you need to consider are:-
don’t rip off someone else’s copyrighted material – sure go to Flickr and browse but use the advanced search to find images that allow for re-use (a creative commons licence)
You can buy royalty-free photos from a number of websites (e.g. iStockPhoto – this is where I buy many of mine from) – A little trick here is that these sites often offer a free photo of the week (worth knowing if you are building up a collection)
Use your own photos! Get out your camera and snap away – then there is no issue with copyright
Draw your own pictures either using software and importing it into your powerpoint or on paper then photographing as above. This can be a brilliant way of creating a story. See this example by Matt Harding (Where the Hell is Matt?)
Challenge #6. Rehearse. No really!
You do have to rehearse to check that you can tell your story in the time available – really you do!
So there are some hints and tips to be going on with. Have you had to give a pecha kucha? Can you share any tips?
The following is a guest post from Janet Wilkinson (Three Times Three) on the topic of putting together a business plan for the uninitiated.
Inevitably there is no single answer to the question ‘what do I need to include in my business plan and how long should it be?’ and a Google search on the two words business plan suggested that there are about 1,640,000,000 results.
The key here is not the number it is the word ‘about’. A business plan is:
About the thing you are going to develop – your idea, your organisation, services you will provide, products you will make or sell and the names/brand you are going to give them. The origin of the idea and ownership of any intellectual property to the idea or product need to be covered in the plan too.
Aboutyou and the other people who are going to work to be able to deliver the project, idea or enterprise. This is crucial to demonstrate your experience, expertise and ability to engage others in the plan.
Aboutthe finances for the business: what money is required for the idea to be developed initially and where is it going to come from? How will money flow into the organisation and when? What will you have to spend money on and when will you have to spend it? Is there a gap between the money flowing in and the money flowing out (and who will cover this)? How much risk is there in developing the idea (now and in the future) and who is taking this risk?
“Would you tell me, please, which way I ought to go from here?” said Alice
“That depends a good deal on where you want to get to” said the Cat.
“I don’t much care where….” Said Alice
“Then it doesn’t matter which way you go” said the Cat.
Alice in Wonderland, Lewis Carroll
Ultimately, business plans are about direction. One of the main purposes of having one is to communicate your intentions to the outside world (where you need to include them). They are for communication to anyone who is investing in the project or organisation, lending money to it, funding it or is responsible for delivering the goals or results for it. Overall, though, I’ve always felt that it is the process of business planning that is the output rather than the document itself. The time taken to plan what you are doing is invaluable and the decisions you make about your intentions and how the logistics, finances and people involved are going to make it happen are all part of the business planning process.
Similarly, understanding how the money is going to flow in and out of the organisation to make sure you have enough to do what you want to do in the coming years and sustain your idea development is a crucial part of the process. When I came across the following quote a few years ago it helped to set my practical understanding and experience in some context.
In preparing for battle I have always found that plans are useless, but planning is indispensable.
Dwight D. Eisenhower
So, does it need to be 200 pages or will it work on the back of an envelope? Inevitably the answer is somewhere in between and it depends upon the audience who will receive and read your plan. Keep the content and size of your plans appropriate to the size of the organisation or idea, think about who is going to receive them and keep them realistic (particularly the numbers) with threads of ambition, drive and future focus throughout – thinking about how the idea and organisation will be sustained beyond the lifetime of the plan.
Also, think about how you are going to communicate the plan to others – will you be sending it to them to read or presenting it in person? Regardless of the size of your idea it is useful to think about how you’d summarise it in 2-3 pages and/or 20 slides. Putting this kind of framework on your business plan enables you to concisely to explain your plan, purpose, people, product and finances to others.
Typically you will want to cover:
The title or name of your idea
What your idea or organisation is about
The people who will be making it happen and their areas of expertise in relation to the idea and/or running the organisation
The people who will be users, consumers or customers of the idea (and how you are going to reach them)
What might exist already in the environment you plan to operate it (and whether these are competitors or potential collaborators)
What the longer term plans are for your idea or organisation
How much money do you need to get started (and where will it come from)
How will the money flow in and out of the organisation in the next 1, 3 or 5 years?
How much money you are likely to need in the future for expansion or development of your idea and where will it come from.
As with all writing and plans it is important to start somewhere. Business plans can be put together initially from your areas of strength working towards the ‘unknowns’ where further research and information gathering can be done. So, start on the back of an envelope even if it needs to be 200 pages in the end!
The Digital Doctorate 