Viewing the business as a whole

In order to discover how the business will operate you will need to undertake research that will realise a holistic understanding of the business model that best works for your business. Discovering how the total business will operate rather than how the “job” within the business will get done.

It is very important that your initial research encompass not only the market place and your potential customers but it will need to uncover the business/industry that you are entering. Too often the mistake is made that the only research needed is that which relates to the customers. In fact the research must cover all aspects of the business and the environments that surround it. When we say all aspects of the business we mean everything that involves the start-up and running of the business. The size of this task usually deters most new entrepreneurs from completing it. Through this research you will gain an understanding of what business you are really in. We will discuss this later in the chapter.

Without comprehensive research businesses can and do fail. The research approach has been broken down into manageable parts or environments as I call them.

There are essentially three areas or as we prefer to call them “environments” that will affect the business and each of these will need careful review and understanding.