Business Plan, Business Reality: Starting and Managing Your Own Business in Canada, 5th edition

Business Plan, Business Reality: Starting and Managing Your Own Business in Canada is designed for post-secondary-level courses and workshops. It can also be used by anyone who wants a “do-it-yourself” plan for self-employment (actors, animal wranglers, bodyguards, bush pilots, choreographers, computer geeks, decorators, fashion designers, landscapers, private investigators, researchers, singers, sound mixers, video editors, writers . . . ) as well as those who will start more traditional small businesses (clothing stores, consulting firms, machine shops, paralegal offices, photography studios, publishing companies, restaurants . . . ). The list is endless.

Content Highlights

• The E-Revolution including Tablets, smartphones, the cloud, robotics, and a host of other technologies have changed how we communicate, navigate, purchase, persuade, research, and run many other aspects of our lives. And each of these changes has produced a myriad of opportunities to make money. How to make that money is what today's student wants to learn.
• The Contract Worker Economy. The days of big companies providing lifetime jobs and indexed pensions are history. Business support functions are increasingly outsourced and short-term employment contracts are common. Graduating students need to see themselves as self-employed, as their own brands, responsible for developing and selling their own skills and services; they need to see themselves as entrepreneurs.
• The Growth in Entrepreneurship Research. In years past, the teaching of entrepreneurship was based, at best, on poorly supported theories. But over the past three decades, scientists around the world have been creating new methodologies, testing hypotheses, and building a body of data about entrepreneurs and the economies in which they work. Today, we have increasingly reliable information to help graduates reduce the risk of being in business for themselves.
• The Refocusing of Business Schools. Business-related programs are arguably the country's largest postsecondary field of study. No longer training centres for large employers, business schools are Canada's innovators in entrepreneurial education, hubs for business communities, and incubators for small firms.

New and updated features of this title

• As the world shifts to a greater reliance on digital media, it is appropriate that this text evolves as well. This fifth edition is the first fully digital version of Business Plan, Business Reality. Instructors and students will find that, although the medium has changed, the content is fully consistent with prior editions.
• Chapters have been reorganized to put the broader, more theoretical discussion of business plans at the end of the book. Chapter 6 includes several sample business plan formats.
• New mini cases have been added at the end of chapters to give students more opportunity for applying knowledge. Longer supplementary cases are still available to instructors as hand-out material.
• More e-business and technology examples have been used in an attempt to reflect the changing economy.