Business Project 2600-BM-BP

Phase I – Opportunity Discovery and Validation
1. Course introduction, ideation and team formation
- Introduction to the course, expectations, assessment approach, and final project. Students explore potential real-world problems, unmet needs, and business opportunities, with particular emphasis on cases that can be investigated directly through access to relevant stakeholders (e.g. the University of Warsaw, small businesses, start-ups, and non-profit organizations), and form project teams.
2. Understanding customers
- Identification and analysis of customers, users, beneficiaries, and other key stakeholders. Students investigate customer problems, needs, behaviors, expectations, and existing alternatives.
3. Understanding the market
- Analysis of the market and broader business environment surrounding the proposed opportunity, including relevant trends, existing solutions, competitors, substitutes, and market dynamics.
4. Opportunity validation
- Testing whether the identified problem or opportunity is sufficiently important, relevant, and actionable. Students critically examine their assumptions using evidence collected from desk research, customers, stakeholders, and the market.
Phase II – Business Project Development and Implementation Planning
5. Solution refinement and business case
- Translation of validated customer and market insights into a refined solution concept. Students use design thinking principles and available evidence to improve the proposed solution and develop its underlying business case.
6. Project scope, work plan and responsibilities
- Definition of project objectives, scope, key activities, outputs and deliverables. Students develop an implementation logic and establish roles, responsibilities, and ownership within the proposed project.
7. Schedule, resources and budget
- Development of a realistic implementation schedule and identification of the financial, human, technical, and organizational resources required to deliver the project. Teams prepare an initial project budget and consider relevant resource constraints.
8. Risk, quality and feasibility
- Assessment of the project’s technical, operational, organizational, financial, and market feasibility. Students identify major project risks, develop appropriate mitigation measures, and establish basic quality requirements.
9. Monitoring, impact and proposal integration
- Definition of project success indicators, monitoring mechanisms, and expected business, organizational, and/or societal impact. Teams integrate the different components developed during the course into a coherent business project proposal.
Phase III – Communicating and Pitching the Business Project
10. Business storytelling
- Students learn how to convert complex project information into a compelling and logically structured business narrative tailored to decision-makers and other relevant audiences.
11. Pitch deck design
- Development of a professional pitch deck that communicates the problem, evidence, proposed solution, business rationale, implementation approach, expected impact, and call to action clearly and persuasively.
12. Pitch rehearsal and expert feedback
- Teams deliver rehearsal pitches and receive structured feedback on narrative, evidence, presentation structure, visual communication, delivery, and persuasiveness. Feedback is incorporated into the final pitch and project proposal.
13. Final pitch day and course conclusion
- Teams present their final business projects to a jury and defend the rationale, evidence, feasibility, and implementation approach behind their proposals. The session concludes the course and provides an opportunity to reflect on the complete project development process.