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BD Lily
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Of Google's countless projects, only about 50% succeed. The company even runs a unique space called 'The Google Cemetery' that displays tombstones of discontinued services. Google dissects these failures like autopsying a body, identifying direct and indirect causes of problems, documenting them precisely, and establishing countermeasures.
Open innovation is a paradigm where companies must intentionally bring in external ideas and technologies, share internal assets with the outside world, and create value to survive and grow. In other words, it's about breaking down organizational boundaries and increasing the probability of innovation through active external engagement—clearly demonstrating why 'absorptive capacity' is a core competitive advantage for modern startups.
What It Means to Work as a BD Professional in Korea
Many Korean companies are hiring BD professionals, but most operate without clearly defining the role.
Under the same BD title, large corporations expect an 'internal coordinator,' mid-sized companies want a 'senior salesperson,' and startups need an 'all-purpose problem solver'—completely different roles. Job postings list impressive phrases, but most organizations lack consensus on what BD should be responsible for or how much authority the role should have.
Through real cases across different company sizes, we'll explore how BD professionals in Korea are shaping their roles within their respective environments.
The role of BD in large corporations is to turn new value into actual business within complex organizational structures and decision-making systems. While large companies can afford to experiment for 3–5 years, making anything move is the biggest barrier.
Success Case
A successful BD professional at Group A, a traditional manufacturing conglomerate, chose to understand and leverage organizational inertia rather than confront it head-on. They translated Silicon Valley innovation into the organization's familiar language of 'productivity improvement' and 'cost reduction,' started with small PoCs instead of demanding massive investment, and built trust by proving effectiveness with data.
They identified people interested in digital transformation in each business unit and turned them into co-champions, taking an 18-month approach to give the organization time to digest change. The result was the introduction of an AI-based smart factory solution that achieved KRW 20 billion in annual cost savings.
Failure Case
In contrast, a BD professional who failed at Company B chased only global trends without considering organizational reality. They obsessed over the latest technologies like blockchain and metaverse but failed to connect them to actual business impact, dismissed internal stakeholders' concerns as 'conservative thinking,' and cut off their own collaboration structure.
Over-reliance on external partnerships left them without an execution strategy leveraging internal capabilities. After two years of dozens of PoCs, not a single project reached commercialization, and the team was dissolved.
Mid-sized companies don't have the luxury to experiment as long as large corporations, and their existing sales organizations have limitations in opening new markets. BD in mid-sized companies must balance immediate revenue with future growth drivers.
Success Case
A successful BD professional at Manufacturer C chose a strategy of first focusing on overseas expansion that could deliver quick results to build internal trust. They spent three months conducting on-the-ground research in Vietnam and Thailand to gather real market intelligence rather than desk data, and designed a market entry strategy based on long-term relationships with local partners rather than simple exports.
The approach maximized impact through core partnerships without massive investment. Within a year, they achieved KRW 5 billion in overseas revenue, which now accounts for 30% of total revenue as a core business.
Failure Case
The BD professional at Service Company D chased only trends regardless of organizational capabilities. They focused only on trendy business models like subscription services and O2O without considering internal capabilities and existing customer base, and repeated a cycle of resource waste with an unvalidated 'let's just try it' approach. They reviewed five new business ideas over six months, but not a single project entered the execution phase.
In startups, BD takes on the role of finding and solving 'what the company needs most to survive' rather than having a clearly defined job scope. While it may look like a 'role without definition,' it may actually be the most essential form of BD in that it 'designs all growth structures necessary for company survival.'
Success Case
A successful BD professional at AI Startup E focused on the most essential problem. They accurately identified the reality that the technology was excellent but there were no customers, and focused on solving customers' actual problems instead of explaining the technology's superiority.
They developed paths to reach actual decision-makers rather than just scheduling meetings, and persuaded customers with concrete ROI simulations rather than possibility narratives. After securing their first large corporate client, they closed a contract worth KRW 3 billion in annual revenue and successfully raised Series A funding based on this.
Failure Case
The BD professional at Content Startup F relied only on relationship-centered approaches without a clear value proposition. They actively met with various industry people but only repeated one-way company introductions without understanding counterparts' needs or business models.
They remained stuck in the vague expectation that 'good relationships naturally lead to good business,' and networking itself became the goal without building structures to convert to results. Despite dozens of meetings, not a single substantial contract materialized.
Business development roles in Korea exist in completely different forms across company sizes. Sometimes they look like 'undefined roles.'
But when we place success and failure cases side by side, a common pattern emerges. Successful BD professionals accurately read the reality their organizations faced and designed growth structures within those conditions.
In large corporations, they knew how to leverage inertia; in mid-sized companies, they built trust first with short-term results; in startups, they focused on one essential problem.
Conversely, failed BD professionals universally remained disconnected from organizational reality, stuck in vague expectations about trends or relationships.
The perspective to analyze problems structurally, the sense to connect people and organizations, the capability to design the flow of change. Whether the role is ambiguous or clear, people who possess these three qualities are the BD professionals who ultimately survive.