On tuesday the 22nd of April I had the opportunity to interact with computer science and business students from Africa Nazarene University, the students were making presentations on business ideas they had for a local bus company. It was quite interesting watching the students go through their powerpoints and then later on as part of the assessment team I would pose questions and make contributions to their ideas. The presentations were meant to be business plans that if deemed feasible and profitable would be implemented by the client, one thing was evident in most if not all of the presentations that is that they lacked the business case, what this means is that in as much as they were good ideas none had the facts and figures to back them up.

As part of the panel, I took the ooportunity to explain the importance of selling the idea and not presenting the idea. Most times when we do a presentation we emphasize on how great the idea, oblivious of the fact that clients are interested in answers to the following questions once they've gotten the gist behind the idea:

1. How much will it cost?
2. How long until we break even?
3. How long until we make a profit?