Small Business Management and Entrepreneurship (DeVry)

You will write an extensive research paper on an entrepreneurship failure. As you may be aware, 80% of all small businesses fail within the first five years (50% in the first year). Your research paper must answer the following question: Why does this failure happen, and how can it be avoided? You will need to research a small business or use your entrepreneur that you interviewed to learn about failure. The paper will have three sections.

• Failure Introduction: Your first 2 pages should be a background of the failed business. What was the business? Who were their competitors? What was their mission or business vision? When did the business start and then fail?
• Reason for Failure: This section (2 pages) requires your insights and will be a large part of your grade. You must describe why the business failed. There are many reasons small companies fail, and you should do some basic research (hint – some scholarly research is required here) to determine the common causes and then compare this research to your company.
• Your Analysis: The last section (2 pages) should be what could have been done, in your opinion and based on the knowledge you received in class (another hint – more scholarly research could be used here), to avert the failure. Could the entrepreneur have planned better? Was the idea sound but the implementation poor? Simply put, as the observer after the fact, how could this business have survived?

It is important: Do not write 5 pages on the company and save the last page for the reason and analysis. Please use the guidelines above to ensure that you maximize your effort on this project.

Remember, the point of this research project is for you to evaluate a failure, determine the causes of the failure, and introduce a way the failure could have been averted. This project will give you some insight for your own potential business idea and help you avoid some of the mistakes others have made. As stated above, failure is common in small business; conduct some solid research on this project to identify the risks, so you can create mitigation techniques to increase your chances of success when you venture out with your plan!

Guidelines

• Papers must be 6 – 8 pages in length. (There would be roughly one page per area included in the report.)
• You must follow APA formatting guidelines. Appropriate citations are required.
• Include a table of contents.
• Even though this is not a scientific-type writing assignment and is mostly creative in nature, references are still very important. You must have at least 4 scholarly references. (For more information, please view research information below.)
• Any questions about this paper may be discussed in the weekly Q & A discussion topic.
• This paper is worth 200 total points and will be graded on quality of research topic, quality of paper information, use of citations, grammar, and sentence structure.

Research Information

Locate at least 4 scholarly articles that discuss the failures in small business for inclusion as sources in your paper. What are current trends in this business (or in the overall industry of which this business is a member) that might impact customer service, customer satisfaction, or customer loyalty positively or negatively?

Best Practices

• Cover Page: Include who you prepared the paper for, who prepared it, and the date.
• Table of Contents: List the main ideas and section of your paper and the pages where they are located. The illustrations should be included separately.
• Introduction: Use a header on your paper. It will indicate that you are introducing your paper.

The purpose of an introduction or opening is to

• • introduce the subject and why the subject is important;
  • preview the main ideas and the order in which they will be covered; and
  • establish the tone of the document.

Include in the introduction a reason for the audience to read the paper. Also, include an overview of what you are going to cover in your paper and the importance of the material. (This should include or introduce the questions you are asked to answer on each assignment.)

 

• Body of Your Report: Use a header titled with the name of your project (e.g., “The Development of Hotel X – A World Class Resort”). Then proceed to break out the main ideas: state the main ideas, state major points in each idea, and provide evidence. Break out each main idea you will use in the body of your paper. Show some type of division such as separate sections that are labeled, separate group of paragraphs, or headers. You would include the information you found during your research and investigation.
• Summary and Conclusion: Summarizing is similar to paraphrasing, but summarizing presents the gist of the material in fewer words than the original. An effective summary identifies the main ideas and major support points from the body of your report; minor details are left out. Summarize the benefits of the ideas and how they affect the tourism industry.
• Work Cited: Use the citation format as specified in the Syl