Revisiting business development: a review, reconceptualization, and proposed framework

Abstract

Business Development (BD) activities have become prevalent in practice, and prior research has demonstrated their potential to enhance and complement the core competencies of enterprises. However, the limited and fragmented existing literature on Business Development highlights the need for a comprehensive integration effort to reassess the theoretical foundation and overall concept. This article comprehensively reviews 125 papers on Business Development, investigates enterprises’ responses to business environment changes (which encompass environmental adaptation and resource leverage, environmental management and resource allocation, environmental creation and resource alignment, and environmental exploration and resource development), and clarifies the evolutionary trajectory of the Business Development literature research stream. Furthermore, we advance a comprehensive conceptual framework and theoretical model to identify a network of constructs and their connections with crucial dimensions of Business Development. The findings of this study significantly contribute to understanding Business Development and provide valuable insights for future research and practice.

Keywords

• Business development
• business environment
• strategic innovation
• corporate entrepreneurship
• dynamic capability
• social network