Transferring business development competencies

With all the confusion around the terminology (incubators, accelerators, trainers, coaches, mentors etc.), we have come to a shared understanding to use the term “Business Developer” to designate a person that guides teams in developing their business. The goal is for the team to acquire the entrepreneurial skills to develop their business in the future without external help.

So what does business development mean? It means basically “thinking ahead and planning accordingly”. This should provide teams with a long-term vision and lead to a business plan. The business development also means deploying that business plan into the daily business.

Business development is like a ping-pong – the daily business feeds into the future vision and adjust both vision and correlating business plan by defining strategies how to pursue the vision in the day-to-day performance.

Basically, you lay down your ground rules for the “business”: what platform(s), what type of game, what players, who to work with, what kind of money do you want to make, where do you look for money?