MBA Track — Business Structure, Revenue, and Positioning (6 sessions)
For MBA students. The core gave you the pipeline. This track is where the business analysis lives: the ORBITAL as a business plan, revenue and margins, price-to-win, the certification landscape (NAICS, HUBZone) as a go-to-market strategy, and the marketing-to-government mechanics that get a firm into the room.
Audience: MBA / business students. Prerequisites: shared-core. Readings: doctrine/01, doctrine/05, doctrine/06, doctrine/07, doctrine/09, and the case study.
Session MBA-1 — The pursuit as a business line
Learning objectives. By the end of this session, students can: (1) model a pursuit's unit economics (value, cost, margin); (2) explain how a portfolio of pursuits becomes a revenue line; (3) identify the sunk-cost trap in pursuit spending.
Session plan (60 min).
- Open (5 min): "How much should a firm spend to win a $1M contract?"
- Teach (20 min): doctrine/05 + doctrine/06. The budget axis, pursuit cost as an investment, the portfolio as a revenue model.
- Apply (20 min): a simple model. Given a pursuit's estimated value, estimated win probability, and pursuit cost, what is the expected return? Teams build the arithmetic for three scenarios.
- Discuss (10 min): "When is it rational to stop spending on a pursuit?"
- Close (5 min): assignment.
Discussion prompts. 1. Should pursuit cost be capped as a percentage of estimated value? 2. Where does the sunk-cost fallacy hit hardest in a pursuit?
Homework / reading. Read doctrine/05. Deliverable: a one-page unit-economics model for the Ravonics pursuit portfolio — value, cost, margin, expected value per pursuit.
Comprehension check. What is the expected-value arithmetic of a pursuit? What is the sunk-cost trap?
Session MBA-2 — Price-to-win: pricing as a position
Learning objectives. By the end of this session, students can: (1) explain the three inputs to price-to-win; (2) distinguish lowest-price from best-value evaluation; (3) price a pursuit against a competitive range.
Session plan (75 min).
- Open (5 min): "Is the lowest bid the winning bid?"
- Teach (25 min): doctrine/05. The cost floor, the competitive range, the evaluation's price posture. LPTA vs. best-value.
- Apply (30 min): the pricing exercise. Give teams a real (closed) solicitation with the cost structure of a fictional firm. Build the price-to-win: floor, competitive range, recommended price, and the story that justifies it.
- Discuss (10 min): "When is a higher price the winning move?"
- Close (5 min): assignment.
Discussion prompts. 1. Defend a bid priced above the apparent market. 2. Why is a too-low bid a business risk, not just a lost profit?
Homework / reading. Read doctrine/05. Deliverable: a one-page price-to-win recommendation for one pursuit, with the three inputs shown.
Comprehension check. What are the three inputs to price-to-win? What is the difference between LPTA and best-value?
Session MBA-3 — The ORBITAL as a business plan
Learning objectives. By the end of this session, students can: (1) translate the seven ORBITAL axes into a business-plan frame; (2) use the budget axis to test whether a pursuit is a business; (3) identify the indicators a pursuit should track.
Session plan (60 min).
- Open (5 min): "What separates a project from a business?"
- Teach (20 min): doctrine/06. The seven axes as a business plan in miniature; indicators as the measurement layer; budget as the business test.
- Apply (20 min): in pairs, convert the Ravonics ORBITAL into a one-page business plan: value proposition, team, cost structure, route to customer, success metrics.
- Discuss (10 min): "Which axis is most neglected in real businesses?"
- Close (5 min): assignment.
Discussion prompts. 1. Which two ORBITAL axes are the "business test" of a pursuit? 2. What does a strong indicator set look like?
Homework / reading. Read doctrine/06. Deliverable: a one-page ORBITAL business-plan for a pursuit of your choice, with indicators defined.
Comprehension check. How does the ORBITAL work as a business plan? What is the difference between the budget axis and the indicators axis?
Session MBA-4 — Certifications as go-to-market
Learning objectives. By the end of this session, students can: (1) explain how NAICS, HUBZone, 8(a), WOSB, VOSB change a firm's competitive pool; (2) assess certification posture as a strategic asset; (3) recommend a certification strategy for a firm; (4) describe the marketing-to-government mechanics — account planning, industry days, capability briefings, one-on-ones, and the know-the-mission-before-the-RFP posture; (5) explain how the marketing organization feeds the capture pipeline (in this course's shorthand, the blue team feeds the green).
Session plan (75 min).
- Open (5 min): "Is a HUBZone certification paperwork or a strategy — and how does a small firm get in front of a government customer at all?"
- Teach (25 min): doctrine/01. The small-business universe as a statutory market design; NAICS as the segmentation; certifications as entry into restricted pools. Then the other half of go-to-market: how a firm is seen. Marketing is the first stage of the BD lifecycle (marketing → capture → proposal → negotiate → award) and it feeds capture rather than replacing it. The mechanics: account planning (which agencies, primes, and vehicles you court), industry days and matchmaking events, capability briefings, one-on-ones, and the know-the-mission-before-the-RFP posture — engage the mission before the RFP exists, so the requirement and the relationship are both shaped before a single proposal page is written.
- Apply (30 min): the go-to-market case for Ravonics. First, its certification posture: which pools can it enter, which set-asides fit, what would you add? Second, its marketing mechanics: which agencies and primes does it target, which engagement channels does it use, and what would its one-page capability statement say? Draft the statement outline and a 60-second framing of what Ravonics does.
- Discuss (10 min): "When does a certification stop being an advantage?" and "Where does marketing end and capture begin — and why does the handoff matter?"
- Close (5 min): assignment.
Discussion prompts. 1. Why would a firm not pursue every certification it qualifies for? 2. How does a certification affect pricing power? 3. How is marketing to government different from marketing to commercial customers? 4. What does "know the mission before the RFP" look like as an actual behavior, not a slogan?
Homework / reading. Read doctrine/01, doctrine/09, literacy/capability-statement.md, and the Ravonics case. Deliverable: a one-page go-to-market plan for Ravonics — current certification posture, target pools, target agencies and engagement channels, and an outline of its one-page capability statement.
Comprehension check. How does NAICS determine a firm's competitive pool? What does HUBZone status do for a firm's market position? What is the know-the-mission posture, and why must it precede the RFP?
Session MBA-5 — Delivery, past performance, and the revenue flywheel
Learning objectives. By the end of this session, students can: (1) explain how delivery creates the past-performance asset; (2) model the revenue flywheel of the cosmology loop; (3) price past performance into a firm's valuation narrative.
Session plan (60 min).
- Open (5 min): "What is the most valuable asset a delivery creates?"
- Teach (20 min): doctrine/03 + doctrine/07. Delivery as the seed of the next pursuit; the flywheel; published awards as the public proof.
- Apply (20 min): model Ravonics's flywheel over three years: wins → past performance → better pWin → more wins. Teams sketch the compounding arithmetic.
- Discuss (10 min): "How would you value a firm whose only asset is a strong flywheel?"
- Close (5 min): assignment.
Discussion prompts. 1. Which is worth more to a firm: one big win or a reliable delivery record? 2. How does past performance show up in a firm's valuation?
Homework / reading. Read doctrine/07. Deliverable: a one-page flywheel model for a firm you choose, with the arithmetic shown.
Comprehension check. What is the cosmology loop, and why does it compound? What role does past performance play?
Session MBA-6 — The pursuit portfolio and the board pitch
Learning objectives. By the end of this session, students can: (1) assemble a pursuit portfolio with a risk balance; (2) present pursuit strategy to an investor/board audience; (3) defend the numbers under questioning.
Session plan (75 min).
- Open (5 min): "If you had $100 of capacity, where would you put it?"
- Teach (15 min): synthesis across doctrine/05–07. Portfolio construction, the threshold discipline, the flywheel.
- Apply (35 min): the investor pitch. Each team pitches Ravonics's pursuit strategy — portfolio, price-to-win posture, certification edge, flywheel — to a board of investors. The board interrogates the numbers.
- Discuss (15 min): "What made a pitch credible: the model, the posture, or the story?"
- Close (5 min): assignment and bridge to the capstone.
Discussion prompts. 1. What are the three numbers you must know cold before any pursuit conversation? 2. How do you defend a below-threshold portfolio bet?
Homework / reading. Read the full doctrine folder if you have not. Deliverable: a one-page investor summary for Ravonics — portfolio, price-to-win, flywheel, and the one question you would want to answer first.
Comprehension check. What makes a pursuit portfolio defensible? How does price-to-win connect to the business model?