Business failure is increasingly recognised as an important topic within enterprise education and for good reason: more than half of European businesses will not survive past the 5-year mark. There is a huge economic, societal and personal consequences of business failure: entrepreneurs pay a high cost in lost investment and income, and in self-esteem and career trajectory, not to mention the knock-on effects of unemployment for others.
To help remedy this situation, Smart up will provide early stage entrepreneurs and established SME owner-managers with the knowledge and skills needed to identify and interpret early warning signals of business crisis, and to take timely, corrective actions, thereby facilitating growth, or survival, in unpredictable or adverse situations.
Objective of the Curriculum
The objective of the Curriculum and OERs are to enable trainers, business advisers, lecturers, enterprise educators to access a new teaching model which they can use to introduce the topic of early stage intervention for business failure/crisis into their course provision in the short term.
Overall learning objectives
The “open” nature and flexibility of our resources (they can be used mix + match style) increase the accessibility of the content. The resources are aimed directly at entrepreneurship training providers, they could also be used by private consultants or as part of business courses in colleges and universities. They are designed for use in classroom learning sessions or for small group or one-on-one coaching, but as open resources, their final use depends on the creativity of the trainers themselves.
Specifically, participants will acquire the following knowledge and skills:
In Module 1, we will introduce you to the definitions of business crisis, solvency and most importantly, turnaound.
In Module 2, we introduce you to the importance of detecting approaching crises at an early stage.
In Module 3, Predicting Financial Distress & Indicators of Crisis across your Business. we introduce you to the importance of detecting approaching crises at an early stage.
In Module 4, we introduce you to the importance of a Risk Management and Root Cause Analysis
In Module 5, we introduce you to the importance of a Strategic Options in the Phases of Crisis before bringing you in detail through the Strategic Side of Restructuring.
In Module 6, your learning journey concentrates on the critical area of leadership in crisis.
In Module 7, we introduce you to vital area of learning from crisis. Research shows that we learn three times more from failures than from successes!
In Module 8, your SMART UP learning journey concluded with two vital areas – Crisis Resilience – Business Continuity.
