Corporate development and business development are strategies that help organizations achieve success in various ways. Let’s discuss their differences and how they relate to your business processes.

What are corporate development and business development?

Corporate development involves business growth through internal restructuring and external opportunities for acquisitions and mergers, capital investments, and asset disposals; corporate development is aimed at increasing the value of the business. Internal restructuring includes management changes to improve efficiency, such as hiring new employees and merging or removing positions.

Business development is about identifying opportunities to develop relationships with peers to achieve core business goals and create customer value. These relationships usually develop with companies with similar destinations and attractive offers.

Corporate development vs. business development

Business development and corporate development are similar in that they help companies grow. Their ultimate goal is to help businesses increase the value they can provide to customers. But there are also some differences:

• Business development is an external relationship, while enterprise development is an outward growth through internal change.
• Although corporate development is related to finance, it does not directly increase sales, as financial transactions include acquisitions and mergers and the hiring of new personnel.
• Business development is more closely tied to sales, as partnerships with external companies help increase sales.

Both processes often work together. For example, an enterprise development department may hire a new VP of marketing to oversee marketing activities. Such new hires will open up exciting expansion opportunities to help the company thrive.