Course Description

This course features highlights of the ISCA Conference 2025 held on 12 November 2025.

Synopsis:

In today’s competitive and fast-evolving business environment, small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) must be agile and evidence-driven in identifying and capitalizing on new market opportunities. This session equips SME leaders with practical strategies to test, validate, and scale new ideas while minimizing risk.

The speaker shares a proven framework for assessing business viability from three critical angles:

Market Feasibility: Understand how to assess market demand, target segments, and competitor positioning before making major investments.
Real-World Validation: Learn how to pilot your idea in a controlled, cost-effective manner and gather actionable feedback from early adopters.
Financial & Operational Feasibility: Evaluate the cost, capacity, and sustainability of scaling your solution — from funding needs to internal capability alignment.

This session is ideal for SME founders, business development leads, and innovation teams looking to unlock growth opportunities in a structured, data-informed way.

Intended For:

Audit Professionals / PAIP
Finance Professionals / PAIB
C-suite & Directors
Business Owner

Competency Mapping:

CPE Category "Others" = 0.5 CPE Hour

Agility, Disruption and the SME Growth Mindset
Testing, Learning and Scaling Through Controlled Experimentation
Leading Growth Through AI, Agility and People-Centred Execution

Slides: From Disruption to Direction: Market Opportunities for SME in Uncertain Times

Karunesh Prasad

Founder and CEO, Change Et Al. & Board Match-Up

Karunesh Prasad (KP) is the Founder and CEO of Board Match-Up, a C-Suite and Board Advisory platform. A seasoned transformation leader known for his strategic, people-first approach to navigating complex change, Karunesh spent a significant part of his career at General Electric (GE)—an institution globally recognised for operational excellence and leadership development.During his tenure at GE, Karunesh held pivotal HR and transformation roles across India, Asia, USA and Europe in regional and global roles as Global Head (Post-Merger Integration, M&A), HR Head & Global Quality Leader (Best Master Black Belt, Six Sigma), and facilitated programs like Working in a Matrix and FastWorks—shaping GE’s next-gen leaders. Leveraging this legacy, Karunesh founded Change Et Al., a management consultancy boutique firm, before he founded Bridge Et Al., a gig-economy platform. He is also a committee member of Singapore Institute of Directors for the NRCC chapter, and a graduate of the International Directors Program (INSEAD).

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