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2396 : STEP FOUR – PLANNING FOR IMPLEMENTATION

particular customer is good only for sales, but actually may provide
start-up advice or introductions to other non-competing customers.
Perhaps a supplier will provide sales leads for you on the grounds that
their business ultimately benefits.

Karan Bilimoria took this approach to extremes when he persuaded the
Indian supplier of his beer, Mysore Breweries, to provide him with a
letter of credit in addition to shipping the first consignment of beer, so
that the brewery in effect bought the beer from themselves.

step 3: evaluating and selecting ideas to resolve the financial
block to implementation Assuming that you have generated a

number of options for resolving the redefined financial problem, you can
then turn to techniques for evaluating and selecting the best options. You
could undertake a rough-cut screening against criteria such as ease of
implementation or degree of business control which is lost.

Fine screening could involve a criteria grid which prioritises the
various options against the financial benefit involved moderated by the
likelihood of its achievement.

milestone planning Now that you have identified the blocks

to implementation and have created and selected solutions to overcome
them, the final task within the fourth step of the idea development
process is the identification of key events and activities, definition of
their timing and inter-dependencies, and articulation of the
assumptions which underlie your business case and which will be
tested against reality at each milestone.

A number of techniques and tools of varying complexity exist to
achieve this. They include Research Planning Diagram, Program
Evaluation Review Technique (PERT), Critical Path Analysis, GANNT
chart and so on.

Milestone planning is one of the more effective techniques and was
brought into particular prominence by a seminal Harvard Business
Review article by Zenas Block and Ian MacMillan.181 This technique
recognises that the actual implementation process for your new
business idea will progress via a number of major events, known as
milestones, which must happen in the course of turning your business
idea into a viable business in practice.