Winning work isn't enough anymore.

Markets are shifting, and one-client markets are disappearing. Business Development is no longer about sales — it's about enterprise development. It's time we treat it as a strategic capability — one that drives positioning, impact, and resilience in red oceans.

For many years, purpose-driven organisations — in education, employment, international development, and beyond — have approached Business Development as a sales function. The Business Developer was a relationship manager, a tender writer, a trusted advisor who knew how to win work from a single dominant client, often a government agency, a bilateral donor, or a multinational corporation.

This approach suited what Kim and Mauborgne (2005) called “blue oceans”: relatively uncontested markets where procurement pathways were predictable and anchored in relationships. But today, those oceans have turned red — more competitive, more fragmented, more demanding. A single-client orientation no longer ensures relevance, let alone sustainability.

From One Client to Many Markets

The external environment has changed. Public procurement has become more decentralised. Donor budgets are shrinking, localised, or increasingly tied to performance. Private sector and philanthropic capital is flowing through more diverse, impact-focused channels. And the lines between funder, partner, and client are blurring.

Organisations now operate in a many-client market, where:

  • Opportunities come from government, foundations, local authorities, private investors, and blended finance vehicles;
  • Each of these actors expects different value propositions, impact models, and levels of sophistication;
  • And the relationships are not just transactional, but collaborative, data-driven, and strategically aligned.

To navigate this complexity, organisations need to fundamentally shift how they conceptualise, structure, and resource their growth and positioning functions. This means diversifying skillsets, integrating market intelligence into strategic planning, and designing business models that allow for modular, adaptable propositions tailored to different client archetypes.

Business Development as Enterprise Development

In this new landscape, Business Development must be understood as Enterprise Development — a concept far more expansive and strategic than traditional sales.

As defined in one of the few robust academic treatments of the topic:

Business Development: “...enterprise development; the activity that increases, or is intended to increase, the profit, production, or service potential of an enterprise; investment of capital and time that causes, or is intended to cause, the growth and expansion of an enterprise; the process of moving a business towards the point where it can provide its services and products to the entire outside group that wants them; the promotional side of business networking; persuading, or intending to persuade, prospects that appear to have the potential to become customers, clients, or buyers; the process of promotion to build and sustain working relationships that relate to the business purpose” (Kind & zu Knyphausen-Aufseß, 2007, p. 178).

This definition underscores that Business Development is not merely transactional. It is expansive — spanning investment, capability development, strategic outreach, and the active shaping of external relationships.

Shifting Definitions Are Great, But What Does This Mean in Practice?

This expanded view of Business Development includes a wide range of actions that may not traditionally be labeled as such, but clearly fall under this more strategic and embedded definition. For example:

  • Solving persistent operational issues like 'boomerang problems'—those recurring inefficiencies that repeatedly disrupt service delivery.
  • Making an IT process simpler or more efficient.
  • Redesigning a system interface so that colleagues spend less time navigating it.
  • Building internal mechanisms that help programs become more fundable or more scalable.
  • Creating a smoother onboarding experience for partners or clients.

All of these are Business Development, because they improve the service potential, adaptability, and growth-readiness of the organisation. They strengthen internal alignment, remove friction from processes, and increase the likelihood of sustained client and stakeholder engagement.

It is as much about internal alignment and organisational transformation as it is about client acquisition.

Organisations must embed Business Development into their strategic management processes. This includes connecting it with the theory of change, impact logic, and programmatic design. Enterprise Development is not an add-on; it should influence the services an organisation develops, the markets it enters, and the metrics it uses to measure success.

Part 2: Culture, Capability & Competitive Advantage — What Enterprise Development Looks Like in Action was published the following week.