BA Modern Language and Business & Management (French)

This unit has been designed to look into the feasibility for the commercialisation and development of a business opportunity. The unit will also look at many of the practical skills needed in developing an enterprise such as:- Business processes, marketing and selling .

There are no prerequisites for this unit but previous study of MCEL units is desirable, e.g. MCEL30001 and MCEL30011.

The unit aims to:

Develop the processes and skills required to assess the potential for planning and execution of a successful business, with particular reference to knowledge based businesses.

•  Encourage students to apply enterprise techniques to identify, develop and commercialise new business opportunities.
• Identify and practically apply essential enterprise tools such as research, business modelling , marketing and intellectual property and selling.
• To understand the role of risk and how to manage it in the commercialisation of new ideas.

This unit requires the student to work on a “ Feasibility study” to understand the process involved in how entrepreneurs take the idea for a commercial opportunity (a new product or service) through various processes ultimately to a point to of making their first sale. Students will work on individual projects, (choosing a product or service that interests them) and meet weekly to receive lecturer on a specific enterprise topic and or tutorial style briefing with the relating to the progress of their study. Students are encouraged to discuss project issues, pose problems and potential solutions with their peers and the lecturer. The lecturer will provide specific guidance material to enable students to move their research forward.

The content covered:

• Business, mapping planning, processing, and research.
• Business marketing, protection and communications.
• Business analysis and strategy.
• Business etiquate,  negotication and selling.
• Financial Justification and viability.
• Assess the environmental impact of the proposal and propose mitigating modifications to the proposal.
• Assess risks in all major areas of the proposed business

Lectures, seminars, workshops

The unit will be delivered as a series of lectures together with relevant and topical case studies and in-class activities for students to work on both alone and in small informal groups. The lecture will be supported by hand-out notes, case studies, guest speakers, PowerPoint files and electronic resource web links through Blackboard.

Students should be able to:

Explain the feasibility process in assessing and commercialising a new product/service business opportunity.
Demonstrate a deep knowledge of the entrepreneurial process.

Students should be able to:

Perform an analysis of a related market.
Perform an analysis of competitors products/ services.
Perform an analysis of risks.
Identify major elements of cost and income.
Perform an initial environmental impact assessment.

Students should be able to:

Undertake primary and secondary market research.
Undertake an IP search using patent databases.
Be able to communicate a business scenario in both the written and verbally form.
Practically demonstrate the skills of business etiquette, formalising a meeting, negotiation etc.

Students should be able to:

Design and deliver a professional formal business presentation.
Design and deliver appropriate detailed written business Communiqués.

Formative assessment:

A short set of power point slides proposal proposing project to be worked on - mark not used

Summative assessments:

Oral Presentation plus Q&A - 50%

A Structured Feasibility Poster plus appendices document - 50%

Formative feedback is the feedback given to help you to develop and improve students’ work with the unit of study.

Additional formative feedback is available to you through the following means:

• Attending lectures, joining discussions about case studies and doing short work tasks set within the lecture session.
• Your lecturer will reply to brief individual questions at the end of each lecture session, if there are a few minutes to spare.
• Your lecturer will provide brief replies to your e-mailed enquiry.
• Your lecturer may feedback messages to the whole class via Blackboard if the point that you have raised could be of benefit to the whole class.

In this unit, a summative work assessment is marked and comments will be returned to you via Blackboard as well as a hard copy of any feedback sheets made available from MBS UG services.

“Marketing Communications: Integrating Offline and Online with Social Media” Paul Smith and Ze Zook Kogan Page, 2011
“The Ultimate Small Business Marketing Book”, Dee Blick, (Filament Publishing), 2011
“The Business Enterprise Handbook”, Colin Barrow, Robert Barrow, Liz Clarke, Published by Kogan Page
“Starting a Successful Business”, Michael Morris, Published by Kogan Page
“Financial Management for the Small Business”, Colin Barrow, Published by Kogan Page

Additional References

“The Business Plan Workbook”, Colin Barrow, Paul Barrow, Robert Brown, Published by Kogan Page
“Strategic Entrepreneurship - A Decision Making Approach”. Philip Whickham, Published by Prentice Hall
The Successful Entrepreneurs Guidebook, C Barrow, R Brown and L Clarke 2006, Kogan Page

Please note: This unit runs for 6 weeks only.

For Academic Year 2023/24

Updated: March 2023

Approved by: March UG Committee