45  Thematic Chapter on Business skills

For this chapter, there are two readings.  The first will aid you in completing the task of this chapter, which is to write a professional style proposal to a superior.

Applicable Academic Strategies:

• Evaluating Types of Reading Materials
• Asking Questions before Reading
• Reading Actively
• Finding the Supporting Points
• Evaluating Supporting Claims of Texts
• Reading Charts and Graphs
• Citing Sources

Reading 1: Business Writing Tips for Professionals

Read the following article by Sharif Khan.

https://www.amanet.org/articles/business-writing-tips-for-professionals/

Many of these same steps can be applied to creating a business presentation in either PowerPoint, Slides, or created by hand.  Reducing the artful language and getting to a more clear and concise statement will reduce the amount of time need to explain the key concepts and ideas in the proposal or presentation.   When creating any written visual aids adhere to a 5×5 model.  Five lines per slide or page with five words per line.  These lines are the main talking point; never under any circumstances should you, as the presenter, read the slides verbatim.   Your audience should have a handout and your attention they do not need a story time.  Another consideration in this style of writing is to avoid acronyms that are outside of your industry.  Each industry and business has their unique system of simplification of terms and industry common phrases, these are not common to outsiders so do not assume that they will know them.  Lastly, any images included in the presentation should be minimal and only to enhance the presentation, not distract from it.

Reading 2: Creativity and productivity in product design for additive manufacturing: Mechanisms and platform outcomes of remixing by Sascha Friesike, Christoph M. Flath, Marco Wirth, and Frédéric Thiesse

Read the article and write a proposal to a business of your choosing for implementation based on the information in the article.  Use the applicable strategies and information from this chapter to complete the reading.

https://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/epdf/10.1016/j.jom.2018.10.004

Strategy: Business Writing Best Practices

Using the ideas from the previous two articles, compose an email to your instructor detailing this section based on the best practices that were outlined in this strategy.

Strategy: Presentation Skills for Business

General Presentation Strategies: Preparation Beforehand

Prepare a presentation on a topic of your choice. You may want to consider a business presentation.

• Set a presentation agenda at the beginning. Give an overview of the points you will cover.
• Simplify. Highlight the important parts instead of rehashing everything from start to finish.
• Cite your sources.
• Edit your presentation. Proofread to make sure your slides, pictures, and so forth are error free.
• Provide closure. At the end, give a short overview. Additionally, what do you want people to do with the information? Perhaps you want to call them to act, or to thinking about changing in some small way.

PowerPoint/Slide Show Presentation Best Practices:

Check out the following resource on some of the best practices when it comes to PowerPoint or designing slideshows:

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial 4.0 International License. “Slide Show/PowerPoint Best Practices” used under CC BY/Desaturated from original