Pick a company of your choice and analyze (answer the following questions)
Please confirm with me which company you are going to do before you start.
Companies that CANNOT BE USED:
Tesla, Patagonia, First Solar, Zipcar, Burt’s Bees, TOMS shoes, Chlorox, Starbucks, Tony Chocolonely, Allsafe, ShaktiAmas, Umicore, Greyston Bakery, Lush, Apple, Tesla, or Virgin
Needs a cover page, table of contents.
At least 8 references must be include. Database such as Factive/Statita/Thomson should be well used.
Assessment Questions:
Part A. Introduction
Start your introduction by mentioning how unique the case you cover is, considering both aspects of uniqueness, a) how novel and little known it is to a broader public (your discovery), and b) how interesting (intriguing) it is. Make sure to provide a strong argument for each, why your case is a discovery, and why it is intriguing. Then proceed to the following questions:
1. What types of entrepreneuring practices and practitioners can you identify in your case? How have these mutually influenced each other and shaped the venture?
2. How did core elements of the venture (resources, opportunity, team) change over time? How have these changes shaped the venture at different points in time?
Part B. Start-up phase
3. What ideas and opportunities were central in the start-up phase? How have these influenced the venture and its entrepreneuring practices?
4. What are the key elements of the business model of the start-up? How have they contributed to getting the venture off the ground?
Part C. Growth phase
5. What type of growth/ development strategies and partnerships have been used? Explain the impact of these strategies.
6. How have growth and development been organized and funded? Explain how this has impacted the growth and development of the company.
Part D. Maturity phase
7. What example can you provide for the mature ventures corporate entrepreneurship or intrapreneurship. Explain if and how this activity has impacted the now-mature venture.
8. Provide an example that illustrates a failure or exit of the company, or of its founders. How have they managed the situation?
Assignment rules and tips:
-Pick a unique, but doable case! A crucial characteristic of a strong assessment is how unique the case is that you have chosen. If you decide to pick one of the usual suspects like Apple, Tesla, or Virgin, your chances to get a good grade are much lower than if you pick a unique less well-known case. If you do so, make sure early on, that you can find enough empirical material to meaningfully answer the required questions.
-Work the visuals! An excellent way of bringing together frameworks and empirical material in a case analysis is the use of self-produced (NOT simply copied from the lecture materials!) visuals. To conduct and show your analysis in your write-up it is recommendable to produce tables and figures that combine the frameworks, models, or other conceptual contents from lectures and wider academic literature with empirical material (e.g. language quotes, facts found, statistics).
