Stage Three: What do you need?

This stage helps you to shape your creative business' next steps.

The tools featured here are focused on planning and mapping out the next stage. They help you to build a thorough, practical business case and to look for fundraising in the right places. After using these tools, you'll have a strategy in place. You'll also know where to start with partnership working, change management and marketing and communications.

Stage Three

The Tools

Strategy and Planning
Tools for understanding where your business is positioned
How resilient is your business?
Factors to think about to ensure your business survives
Strategic group mapping
A mechanism for understanding the other players that operate in your field
Strategic options
A tool which outlines the various business strategies you might consider
Business planning
Tools for assessing your business plan
Business plan readiness assessment
A framework for analysing the rigour of your business plan
The plan cruncher
An online visual tool to help you asses your business idea
Business case development
How to build a robust business case
Developing a robust business case
A self-assessment tool to help you evaluate your business case
Fundraising
Tools for looking at your fundraising model and campaigns
Fundraising readiness check
A checklist to help you review the status of your fundraising campaign
Funding models
10 models of funding – which one are you?
Change management
Tools for understanding change projects
The agreement/certainty matrix
A complexity based tool to support you in assessing your activities and decisions
Change quadrants
Another way of looking at the nature of change and your business culture
Investment readiness
A tool to assess whether you are ready to seek external investment
Are you investment ready?
A checklist to use if you are considering an investment route for your business
Partnerships /Collaboration
Tools for supporting collaborations and joint working
Levels of joint working
A tool to help you define the level and approach you want to take for joint working projects
Compete, collaborate, complement
Helping you analyse the types of relationship you want with other businesses working in your field/market
Strategic alliances
A checklist to help you consider if a merger is the right approach for your business
Marketing and communications
Tools for assessing your markets, products and/or services
Portfolio analysis – where do you make your money?
A well-used tool for analysing your products and/or services
Business growth options – Ansoff’s Matrix
Another well-established approach to help you consider the markets or sectors you operate in
Customer relationship management – a maturity checklist
A rating tool to help you consider your approach to CRM
Getting social - a social media checklist
This tool helps you look at social media and consider whether it is the right approach for you
Creative problem solving
Tools to open up your problem solving approaches
Gordon/Little technique
A problem solving technique that encourages you step right back from the problem
Problem reversal
Take your problem and turn it on its head, see what new insights that gives
Attribute listing
A approach to problem solving where you break it down into its various attributes
Association problem solving
An open thinking process to aid your creativity
Assumption reversal
An approach to turning your problems on their head
Pattern language
A visual tool to help open up your thinking