Building a Business Plan: The basic components video, and IP too.

Building a Business Plan: The basic components - YouTube: "

Here's the basics about a business plan by yours truly, Dr. Elmer Hall, President of

Strategic Business Planning Company. We help develop the plans that every business needs(tm).

"
A business plan helps to plan out the future of the business and estimate its profitability. Also, as the company grows quickly it may outgrow itself. That is, you can fund the growth with profits, but if you exceed that rate then outside funding will be needed. Look at the sustainable growth rate model in finance.

This is the basics of a business plan, but we modify a basic business plan to accommodate Intellectual Property protection (read, sustainable competitive advantage). As you watch Shark Tank to see how venture capitalist think, you will see how seriously important intellectual property is to the success of a business -- and the likelihood of a shark investor taking a BIG bite of the action.

A business plan would likely include these component, as shown in the video, and then have some modification to show the (potential) strength of the IP. We call this IP-centric plan a Patent Business Plan., or for larger companies an IPplan.

Look at the Patent Primer to get an idea of the various aspects of IP and how to build a strong patent competitive advantage.

• Patent Guide 2.0 & Patent Primer 2.0: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/SBPlan
• (Primer 2.0 Kindle eBook: www.tinyurl.com/IPPrimer2e) 

As it pertains to environmental sustainability -- triple bottom-line planning -- look at discussions over at www.SustainZine.com. The plan here would be a specialized business plan we call a Sustainability Plan. This would be a business plan that also maps out moving to full zero foot print over time: say 5, 10, 20 years, depending on the business/industry.

'via Blog this'

Florida Business Incubation Association: Florida Incubators

Florida Business Incubation Association:

Business incubators are so very cool. Generally they bring together all the components a business will need to get started or to expand. This usually includes funding sources. But as important are the key services that every organization needs. Business advice (often tied in to the SBA's Small Business Development Centers -- SBDC)... Accounting, IT, Intellectual Property protection (patents, TM, C,...), secretarial services, etc. Lots of marking help are critical, web site, search engine optimization and more...  See the SBDC for Florida.

Frequently incubators are tied in to the science departments of universities so the inventions of the academic world can be transported into the business world.

An entrepreneur (or two) can't do everything within the startup business. The incubator helps coach them into giving up some of the jobs at the company so that they can focus on one (or two).

Often there are reduced costs for incubatees who are accepted into an incubator...

There always is a graduation process for the incubatee as he/she grows up to be an adult company!:-)

Incubators often have internal and external networks to help engage veterans and peers in their efforts.

Here's the place to go for Business Incubator info -- National Business Incubator Association: https://www.nbia.org/
* Find your incubator here based on region and or type of incubator.

Check out the incubators in your area:
* Florida ... or Florida Business Incubator Association...
* Georgia
* California

Business incubators are some times called accelerators, since they accelerate the process of a business moving forward.

'via Blog this'

Patent law changes alter entrepreneurs' planning

Patent law changes alter entrepreneurs' planning:

This is a nice article by Laura Baverman about patents and how they needed to be integrated into the business plan and entrepreneurs' strategy. Since the US is now first-to-file, inventors must get their foot in the proverbial patent door early, often with a provisional patent while the details are being worked out.

This article also slips in the key provisions related to the laws and fees that were enacted in March of 2013.

Although the fees have all been dramatically increased, especially the follow-on maintenance fees, there is actually a micro-entity option that is only 25% of the full fee structure for large entities. (To qualify as micro, you must not have a high income and not have too many patents in your name.)

There are a few things that are are perfectly touched on in such a short article. There's a quick look at the staging process to protect the invention without bankrupting the small inventor. There's a side story about the great use of a business incubator for a specific company, EnerLeap, the next-best Lithium battery.

There's the indication of how IP must be specifically budgeted into the business plan. Your business plan must have the budget for IP, it must have the timing for IP expenses (patent, TM, Lawyer, R&D, engineering, etc.), and it must accommodate contingencies for litigation.

Of course, you still want to include the high margins and royalties from licensing in your income stream, you simply need to demonstrate that you have a sound plan for getting to that point.

Great article Laura!

Check out the Patent Primer 2.0, part of the Perpetual Innovation(tm) series, by Hall and Hinkelman (2013) at: http://www.lulu.com/spotlight/SBPlan   ... or ... Kindle eBook at: www.TinyURL.com/IPPrimer2

Visit SBP's IP web site at: www.IPplan.com 

'via Blog this'