Future Growth Management Speech Presentation Paper

This is a strategy analysis course. I think you can help me analyze the future growth of Monsanto. I will send you the teacher's request and the content of the previous assignment.

Group Assignment 4 

Presenting a Strategic Solution

This assignment introduces you to the skill of presenting a clear problem and solution regarding a strategic business problem. Managers have very little time. Your ability to communicate clear, actionable solutions to valuable business problems will be a crucial skill for your career.

To work on this skill, your group’s assignment is to create a pitch deck for a business initiative to be launched in 2020 for a genomics company of your choice (a project in an existing company, or a startup). A pitch deck is a short, concise set of slides that ideally identifies a strategic business problem and proposes an actionable, valuable solution. You can find an additional video explanation here: link. The pitch deck that you build should focus on a single strategic choice regarding a business initiative for helping the company adapt to technological change in the genomics industry.

I. INSTRUCTIONS

II. SAMPLE — THE YC PITCH DECK TEMPLATE

III. GUIDELINES FOR USING THE TEMPLATE

IV. GRADING RUBRIC

I. INSTRUCTIONS

Imagine your manager has at most a few seconds to get interested in your idea. You need to assume the manager may have no background in genomics or, alternatively, is a genomicist who has little idea about business. A successful pitch deck therefore defines very clearly:

• What is the problem that your company faces and what is the solution that you propose? Why is the problem important?
• Why do you propose the particular solution?
• How can performance of the proposed solutions be measured? How does your solution scale as a growth strategy?

Be sure that you weave into slides why the strategy you propose can lead to a competitive advantage. Doing all of this in a small number of slides is much harder than you might think. As the saying goes, ‘If I had more time, I would have written a shorter speech’. A great intermediate test of whether you are on the right track is to show your draft pitch deck to someone who has no idea

II. SAMPLE — THE YC PITCH DECK TEMPLATE

The Y Combinator Pitch Deck Template (template link; template explanation link) should serve as the sample for the assignment. Y Combinator (homepage link) is perhaps the best known incubator of startup companies in Silicon Valley. They have seen thousands upon thousands of presentations regarding potentially valuable business problems. The template that they provide is designed for their needs — in many contexts, you may want a pitch deck that is more elaborate. The YC template’s simplicity, however, is extremely useful in our classroom setting for getting you to clarify your thoughts about a business problem without getting bogged down in other tasks.  Here are some guidelines to help you put together a clear, persuasive deck:

III. GUIDELINES FOR USING THE TEMPLATE (PLEASE READ CAREFULLY)

1. 1.      Please follow as closely as possible the format of the YC pitch deck template. 
2. Re-read Guideline 1.
3. Do not change/add pretty fonts. The clarity of your ideas should stand on their own.
4. No photos or pretty graphics. The clarity of your ideas should stand on their own.
5. Graphs and charts are great, as you can see in the template.
6. A graph and chart should be used to be persuasive, not merely descriptive. That is, each graph and chart in the pitch deck should (just like the text of your pitch deck) be designed to further your argument for a solution. Assume the manager only wants a bare minimum of background knowledge about the problem you are interested in solving. 
7. Any graph or chart should be understandable by someone looking at your presentation for the first time in about half a second by a non-expert.
8. Another note on graphs and charts: labels should be very, very short, clear and big enough to see.
9. Do not add to the number of slides.

IV. GROUP ASSIGNMENT 4 GRADING RUBRIC                               Group Number: