What is business development?
Business development is the systematic discovery and creation of opportunities that connect a customer or partner problem with a credible way for the organisation to create and capture value.
Assess how well you identify opportunities, validate value, and turn promising relationships into disciplined next steps.
Answer as you are today
Choose the answer that best describes your recent behaviour at work. No email required.
What does business development mean?
Business development is the systematic discovery and creation of opportunities that connect a customer or partner problem with a credible way for the organisation to create and capture value.
Why it matters at work
Activity is not the same as development. Strong business development combines market learning, relationship building, commercial reasoning, and a pipeline in which weak opportunities can be disqualified early.
What this assessment measures
Opportunity discovery
Finding meaningful problems, changes, and unmet needs rather than starting with an internal offer.
Value & fit
Testing whether the organisation can deliver a differentiated outcome and benefit commercially.
Relationships & progression
Building trust while moving qualified opportunities toward a clear decision.
How to interpret your score
Your overall result is normalised to a 0–100 scale. Use it to choose a practice area, not to compare your worth with somebody else.
Build your business development foundation
Your answers suggest a few recurring situations where a small, repeatable habit could make this capability more reliable.
A developing business development pattern
You use this capability in some situations. Focus on the dimension that becomes less dependable when uncertainty rises.
A strong business development pattern
Your answers suggest a reliable pattern. Keep testing it with harder problems and evidence from real outcomes.
Designed for reflection, not diagnosis
The ten behaviour-based statements cover 3 practical dimensions. Responses run from “Never” to “Almost always”; negatively worded items are reverse-scored. Overall and dimension results are converted to a 0–100 scale. The assessment is educational and has not been psychometrically validated.
Read the full assessment methodology and editorial standards.
Research that informed this page
Scott Shane and S. Venkataraman (2000), “The Promise of Entrepreneurship as a Field of Research”, Academy of Management Review.