Is Business Development Part Of Innovation?

What is business development, really? Is it sales? Is it kind of like sales? Can innovation play a role in business development? To answer these and other questions, Seth Godin writes the quintessential post on business development, going through 12 things that separate great business development people from everyone else.

It’s so good, that I could just end here… but I want to explore some of his points a bit.

The Key Distinction

Throughout the post, a distinction is made between sales and business development. The biggest one to me being the two way relationship that is achieved from business development deals. Seth talks about both parties selling and both parties buying. That is huge in my mind. Dare I say synergy?

Let’s think about this distinction for a moment. We’re talking about two parties, thinking big here. We’re talking about both parties understanding that there is plenty of money to be made, so there is no use quibbling over table scraps throughout the negotiation process. I really like this concept. It’s win-win. It’s beautiful.

Where’s The Innovation

One example used in the post is the Nike/Apple integration. I want to argue that this kind of business development is akin to innovation in many regards. Innovation being the introduction of something new regardless of whether or not the parts that comprise the new something are new themselves. I understand that business development implies working with external parties, and that innovation is not necessarily restricted to the external. This is still a big deal to me because:

A. Business development and innovation are nearly synonymous
B. Business development isn’t just a sales position.
C. Business development is all about relationships

I’m also pretty pumped to read this, because he gives props to project managers (indirectly) twice in the same post. And apparently I have been doing some – not a lot – of business development at work over the past year. Who knew?

Favorite Takeaways

My favorite takeaways from this post are to always be up front and to end well. With the context of ending well being something like it never really ends if it ends well. I think that one thing I’ve learned over the past year is that it’s definitely ok for deals to never materialize. After some exploration, the timing may not be right, or the budget may not be right, or the situation in general may not be right. All of that is ok, though.

Deals fall through all the time.

What is of utmost importance is the relationship itself. The only chance that a business relationship has to stay in tact after a failed deal is if both parties were up front with one another from the get go… So always be up front and start developing business for your organization.

What Do You Think

Are you as excited about business development now, as I apparently am after reading Seth Godin’s post? Is business development part of innovation? Or does business development still feel and sound a lot like another sales job to you, and you’re not into that sort of thing? Please let me know what you think, in the comments below.