FEASIBILITY STUDY

I'm back, after two weeks of being away from the Internet. Half of it was pleasure (vacation in Orlando) and half of it was business (consulting in Atlanta). I may be spotty in my blogging over the next two weeks, too, as I've got to turn around my report to my client in that time period, plus I'll be making short trips to Morgantown, West Virginia, for a cousin's wedding, and to Richmond, Virginia, for a business conference.

What I'm working on for my client is a feasibility study for the expansion of their existing business incubator. Think of a feasibility study as a business plan for a non-profit organization. My goal, then, is to produce a report that documents my recommendations for if and how they should proceed with such an expansion. It's fun to apply all of the business tricks I learned at Wharton to a cause as worthy as stimulating commercial development in an economically challenged area.

I spent four days in Atlanta collecting data and interviewing different stakeholders involved in the incubator project: current clients, potential funders, staff members, urban planners, and architects. Now I need to crunch all the data, apply over best practices from our incubator, and produce a document that can be used by my client internally (for planning next steps) and externally (for selling partners on the project). I only hope I will have enough time and insight to pull this all together.