Team:Macquarie Australia/Outreach/BusinessProp

How is our project realistically relevant to the renewable energy sector and developing a sustainable future?

A business plan is a written document that outlines a proposal for a new or continuing activity. It does not necessarily need to be created for a business and can also include an academic course or, as is this scenario, a research project. The value and effectiveness of applying a theoretical framework to business operation has been highly debated amongst entrepreneurs and literature. It is often demonstrated that there is little correlation between the creation of a business plan and the relative success of a business (Chwolka, 2012). There is however, strong evidence that applying methodology and logical reason to business actions greatly aids in any decision making, particularly the initial choice to enter a market (Liao, 2006). If a product is destined to be successful, this success is more likely to be realised through the creation of a business plan.

As such, developing a business plan for a research project will evaluate the impression it will have on a commercial market. This is particularly useful in regards to attracting funding from both private and public (government) enterprise. Here at the Macquarie University 2014 iGEM team, we believe that the success of our sponsorship campaign and outreach activities were due to recognising the impact that our project can have on the renewable energy sector. Our business plan also greatly influenced our project through the way we marketed ourselves to potential stakeholders. As noted in sponsorship, sponsorship is difficult to attract in Australia as the vast majority of companies are based overseas. Other Australian iGEM teams may wish to research the impact that their project can have on industry akin to what has been done by the Macquarie University 2014 iGEM team.