Learn More about the SBDC StrategyAssist tool
Built at the Intersection of Experience + Innovation
This AI-powered assessment helps you evaluate your current practices and plan for what’s next. The tool brings together:
- 45+ years of Wisconsin SBDC experience supporting small businesses across industries. Since 1980, the Wisconsin SBDC has provided confidential, no-cost consulting to help businesses start, grow, and succeed.
- Student-led innovation from the UW–Madison Tech Exploration Lab, connecting emerging technology with real-world business needs.
Overview of SBDC StrategyAssist
The AI-powered SBDC StrategyAssist assessment is designed to help you step back and assess what’s working—and where to focus next. You’ll reflect on your current practices and receive practical, tailored suggestions to help strengthen your business.
How the AI Works
This assessment uses an AI model to turn your responses into a structured summary and a set of recommended next steps. It relies on:
- Your answers to the assessment questions, and
- SBDC’s business planning frameworks and best practices that shape the prompts and recommendation rules.
Privacy & data use
Do you save my answers?
No. Your individual responses are used to generate your report, and the tool is designed to avoid storing your detailed answers.
Please don’t enter sensitive information, such as:
- SSNs, bank account numbers, passwords
- Full tax returns or personally identifying customer/employee data
- Confidential contracts or proprietary financial statements
What information do you log?
To improve the tool over time, we plan to track limited, non-identifying usage metrics, such as:
- Number of users/sessions
- How far users get through the assessment (completion step)
- Aggregate trends like “most-selected planning catalyst” or “most-viewed category”
We do not need (or want) names, addresses, or the details of your business to measure whether the tool is helpful.
What kind of refinements were made to the tool as it was developed?
Tools like this don’t just appear. The project began in summer 2025 with a dedicated team of students, who worked to:
- Understand the project itself and the needs of SBDC clients
- Work with SBDC staff to review the content transform the Navigating the New Normal Guide that the Center wrote in 2020 into an interactive assessment that is relevant to today
- Determine what LLM to use (this tool is powered by OpenAI)
- Test real-world scenarios and refine prompts to make results relevant
- Build guardrails to keep recommendations practical and readable
- Build a scoring system to rank responses and prioritize top suggestions
Powered by a Unique UW–Madison Collaboration
This tool was developed through a collaboration between the Wisconsin Small Business Development Center (SBDC) and the UW–Madison Tech Exploration Lab—bringing together real-world business expertise and emerging technology.
About the UW-Madison TECH EXPLORATION LAB
The Tech Exploration Lab is a campus initiative that connects organizations with talented students to explore practical applications of new technologies, including artificial intelligence. Through hands-on, project-based work, student teams help solve real challenges while gaining experience at the intersection of business and innovation.
In this partnership:
- SBDC contributed decades of small business expertise, including proven frameworks, best practices, and insights from working directly with entrepreneurs
- A student team from the Tech Exploration Lab helped design and build the AI-powered experience, translating that expertise into an interactive, accessible tool
This collaboration reflects a shared goal: to make high-quality business guidance more accessible—while thoughtfully exploring how AI can support, not replace, human expertise. It’s one example of how UW–Madison partners are working together to support small businesses in new and meaningful ways.
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Article about the Tech Exploration lab (includes comments from the SBDC)
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Tech Exploration Lab website
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Read the Success Story about this collaboration
About the SBDC StrategyAssist Student Team
Tim Kane is a second-year MBA at the Wisconsin School of Business, WSB, specializing in Technology Strategy & Product Management. He is an MBA Leadership Fellow – Tech & Operations with the Tech Exploration Lab.
Heather Ferguson, SBDC Program Manager, poses with team members Trinity Krohn, McKenzie Ryan Kujava, and Devanshi Jain.
The Wisconsin SBDC Network is a proud part of the Office of Business & Entrepreneurship within the Universities of Wisconsin. It is funded in part through a Cooperative Agreement with the U.S. Small Business Administration. The Wisconsin SBDC at UW-Madison is also part of the Wisconsin Entrepreneurship Hub at UW-Madison.
The Wisconsin SBDC at UW-Madison helps entrepreneurs succeed at any stage. We offer no-cost, confidential consulting and business education across a wide region, primarily serving Dane, Sauk, and Columbia counties. SBDC services are provided in a nondiscriminatory way to all legal residents and citizens in the US.
Reasonable accommodations for persons with disabilities will be made if requested at least two weeks in advance. Contact us at sbdc@bus.wisc.edu or call (608) 263-2221.