The four words it turns on

The task

• You carry out, with consultation, an innovative and sustainable business activity — the largest single piece of work in the subject.
• A business activity is the production of a good or service. You are actually making something and taking it to market, not writing about it.
• The work has four stages:
  • planning for the business activity
  • consulting for the business activity
  • carrying out the business activity
  • evaluating the business activity

Where the quality of the work actually sits

• Every team carries out an activity, so carrying it out is the constant. What separates a thin piece of work from a strong one is the planning, the consultation and the evaluation around it.
• Thorough planning names the four outcomes the activity is aiming at before it starts, sets a measure for each, and says who does what and by when.
• Thorough consultation runs across the activity rather than once at the start, and can be shown to have changed a decision.
• A thorough evaluation measures performance against all four outcomes, compares each with what was intended, and explains why they differ.
• None of this depends on how much money the activity made. A profitable activity with thin planning and a weak evaluation is thin work; a modest activity planned carefully, consulted on properly and evaluated honestly is strong work.

The four words

• Four terms carry the whole activity, and each has an exact meaning:
• Business activity — the production of a good or service. Something is made or delivered, and someone receives it.
• Innovative — originality, invention, commercialisation or improvement, with reference to business formation, functions, people, management and environment.
  • So innovation can be in the product, or in how the business is formed, run, staffed, managed, or in how it deals with its environment. It is not restricted to inventing a new object.
• Sustainable — an ongoing focus on economic, social, cultural (including ethical) and environmental outcomes.
  • Four outcomes, all four required, all four planned for and all four measured. "Sustainable" here does not mean "environmentally friendly".
• With consultation — engaging in consultation with specialist advisors in relation to the innovative, sustainable and ethical aspects of the activity.
  • Specialist advisors, and about those three things specifically. Asking your teacher's opinion is not consultation.

How this differs from the business activity you ran before

• If you have run a business activity before, the shape is different, and assuming otherwise costs you:

	The earlier activity	This one
Focus	A community well-being context	Innovative and sustainable
Structure	Two cycles, with a review and refine between them	One activity, planned and evaluated thoroughly
Support	"With guidance" — your teacher	With consultation — specialist advisors
Evaluation	Against the plan	Against four outcomes, using a tool such as the quadruple bottom line
Extra requirement	—	A business pitch presenting the business case

Planning the whole thing backwards

• The activity runs over most of a year, and the commonest failure is starting the evaluation too late to have any data.
• Work backwards from the evaluation:
  • What will I need to have measured? Four outcomes, so four sets of measures.
  • When must measurement start? Before the activity does — you cannot measure a change without a starting point.
  • Who must I consult, and about what? Advisors need to be approached early enough to influence the plan, not to bless it afterwards.
  • What does the activity actually have to produce, and by when?