Making planning work: insights from business development

Planning for a growth opportunity's success remains a challenge. Under which conditions does planning work, then? This exploratory study investigates the business development tasks and processes that span a growth opportunity's planning phase and its implementation phase and their unique performance implications. On the basis of 73 CEO responses from growth SMEs, the results show that business development increases firm performance and that the effectiveness of business planning depends on business development. Business developer support is found to positively influence firm performance per se. Business development is presented as an important organisational capability to pursue growth opportunities and subsequently theoretically anchored in the resource-based view of the firm. Implications for managers and for future business development research are discussed.