Internal Context Analysis

What is this?

The internal context is every asset, liability, strength, weakness, preference and belief you and your team possess. Internal context analysis answers the questions ‘what do we start from?’, ‘what do we have in our hands?’, 'What aspirations do we have?'. Setting up a business is not an ‘objective’ thing, it is subjective to who you are, who you know, what you know and what you can do in terms of capabilities and resources.  Do you want to be engaged in social or green entrepreneurship, do you want to do something in social media, construction, fashion, or something completely different? What impact would you like to make? How will you define success? Is it profit, social engagement, lower carbon emissions, or something else? It is important to get those cards on the table early on in the process.

This internal analyses is crucial as you want to make sure that the opportunities you identify are feasible to implement. You should approach the internal context analysis in connection with the other actions in this phase and iterate until there is consistency with external context analysis and needs/solutions matching.

But don't worry! While you may learn that there are some things you can't do with your existing skillset, it may be very well possible that you meet people along your entrepreneurial journey that join your team and make you reiterate back to your opportunity space and completely redefine it. Remember that entrepreneurship is an iterative process!