Business Development

Business development means different things to different people. That's why it is appropriate to define the term beforehand. For some it simply means prospection, to others it can mean developing a new product or technology, while to others it can mean investing or divesting corporate assets. All have their own right to claim that their activity is business development, that's why it is necessary to dissect the term.

Business development is about bringing discontinuity into the normal operations of an organization. It's about bringing, doing or developing new things the organization didn't do before.

Levels of Business Development

So, business development has different levels. Those levels being product, commercial and corporate. In the next sections these levels will be explained.

Product level

At the product level business development means developing a new product or technology. Although the level of development can differ from firm to firm. The level of development can be divided into two categories: disruptive and incremental.
Incremental developments are a development which increases the functionality of an existing platform or technology, while disruptive or discontinuous developments are completely new things developed from scratch.
E.g. of an incremental continuous development are extension to already existing products like a new odour for shampoo, a digital camera with 5MIO pixels for your mobile phone, ... In both cases the platform, shampoo and mobile phone remains the same. Discontinue developments are e.g. public key infrastructure (PKI). PKI is discontinuing because it will change the way people do business and authenticate themselves in the future. The technology doesn't have a form yet, nor does it have mature value chains. PKI currently is still at the beginning of the TALC curve. It will take years before it will have a fixed recognizable form. Today PKI is mainly used in ID cards (e.g. Belgium, Malaysia), although its application is certainly not limited to it.

Commercial level

In its simplest form business development at the commercial level means prospection pure et dûr. It means hunting new customers in new segments or markets by, mostly, cold contact. The work requires a highly driven psychologically strong individual capable of handling lots of turn downs. It's certainly not suited for the faint of heart.
The next level of commercial business development is channel or sales organization setup. The channel or sales organization can consist of partners, like agents, distributors, licensees, franchisees, or your own national or international branches. Agent is the legal term used in Belgium law to denote somebody who is representing a principal in exchange for a commission on forwarded customers. In most cases these agents are called resellers, value added resellers, dealers, the latter being the functional position in your channel network.
And last we have commercial business development at the value chain level. At the value chain level business development is about developing the whole product offering. You'll find this type of business development in technology firms that have developed a platform that has to be integrated or combined with other technologies or platforms to form a whole product.
A whole product is generally composed of multiple technologies in order to make it come alive. Those technologies are generally not developed by one firm but sourced from others to save time a.o.

Corporate level

When organizations have to decide whether to make or to buy certain organizational competencies we enter the realm of corporate business development. The focus is not at the product nor the commercial level but the business, financial and legal level.
This level of business development is about mergers & acquisitions (M&A), joint ventures (JV), direct equity investment (DEI) and strategic alliances. It deals with business portfolio analysis, corporate finance, contract law, fiscal law, social law , anti- trust law, change management, culture management...
Organizations can have multiple motives to buy organizational competencies. Examples are: time to market market entry barriers, patent protection, legal constraints, business or proposal complementation, cash flow and profit diversification, ...

Conclusion

From the descriptions above it becomes very obvious that there is not one single meaning of business development. Each level has its own focus and requires different competencies, skills and backgrounds.