Member Training: Activate: How to Start a Business

Are you an aspiring entrepreneur with an exciting idea and want to understand how you can create a thriving business?

Have you got a passion that you want to turn into your ‘side hustle’?

Or are you an early-stage startup and want to see if you’re doing things the right way and identify ways to improve your business?

Activate follows the Lean Startup process, creating and developing our idea in short cycles allowing us to gather feedback to influence changes in the business. Taking place one session a week for four weeks, Activate allows you to work through a plan of action in a more interactive and structured way, giving you the time to reflect. The Activate programme has been designed to allow you to work with peers in a similar situation to yourself, allowing you to build your own support network and champion one another.

The Four Week Programme:

Week 1 – 27th April – Ideas & Assumptions

In session one we take a closer look at your idea and understand what value it brings to your customers. Creating a Customer and Product Canvas we can then begin to look at implementing ways that the product and the process of purchase can be more effective; giving you a greater chance of creating an attractive product or service.

Week 2 – 4th May – Customers & Marketing

In session two we begin to examine your targeted customers in more detail. Who are they? Why do they buy from you? How can we best access them? During this session, we will create our own Customer Profiles highlighting who our targeted groups are, and then we will go about creating a Marketing Strategy to best access at the earliest opportunity.

Week 3 – 11th May – Your Operations

In session three we focus more on you, and your ability to create the product or service you are providing. Through the creation of an Operations Map, we will be able to understand what a typical process from start to finish will be for the creation of goods, allowing you to remove clunky actions and streamline the process. Here we also begin to plan how you can remove risks from your operations and accentuate the potential rewards!

Week 4 – 18th May – Business Model & Vision

And finally, in session four, we bring together everything from the previous three sessions and create your Business Model Canvas. Here you will be able to see everything that you will be doing externally (attracting, engaging and communicating with customers) and internally (activities, partners and resources). Once the business model has been created we will then begin to create a Vision and the actions you need to perform to get there.

All of this combines into creating a more visual and accessible business plan, rather than the traditional approach of creating document after document trying to define your business! The team of Innovation Advisors from Hethel Innovation will be there to help guide you through this process, and for continued support following the course. We are committed to building business in East Anglia and are here to help!

Previous Activate Attendees:

“The Activate course helps you to take your idea, refine it, focus it, and move forward”

“It was great, very galvanizing & useful. Thanks!””Really good course, very engaging + helped me focus my efforts””Great sessions, the trainers were involved and helped each of us with our journeys. Great helping others, helps to broaden & strengthen perspectives”

For more information, please contact Jordan at [email protected]

Hethel Innovation is an EU-funded business support organisation, providing support to Norfolk and Suffolk’s business environment to innovate and become more productive and competitive as a result. Hethel Innovation also provides incubation services through Hethel Engineering Centre and Scottow Enterprise Park.