Business Development in Medium-Sized Company

In the modern-day working environment, companies should thrive on a daily basis to innovate and outgrow their competition, or else risk losing their businesses. This is even more relevant for small/medium enterprises (SMEs) were the consequences could be more impactful. There are two main objectives for this dissertation. The first one is to develop a comprehensive view of the concept of business development, especially in the case of SMEs. This part of the thesis was mainly based on researching the available academic publications, extracting the important and relevant information and combining all the data to form a well-structured idea of the following question “What is business development?”. the outcome of this research and analysis was to develop the main disciplines that constitute the concept of business development. Simultaneously, an internship was conducted in the Italian company “Spesso Gaskets S.R.L” who is specialized in the manufacturing of engine gaskets. and here comes the second objective of the thesis, which was getting involved in business development activities in the company, identifying and developing new potential businesses and opportunities for growth. The outcome of the internship’s work was developing a viable business plan to the top management, which was presented in the form of a presentation. The results obtained show a potential increase in revenues of around 30%.