Business
Development
Academy

Day 1 – From Strategic Analysis to Strategic Design
Explore the key elements of integrated corporate development and strategy formation. Participants understand the strategy process, frameworks such as the Magic Triangle and Business Model Canvas, as well as various analysis methods. The afternoon addresses strategic development options, value propositions, and growth paths, and focuses on translating strategies into action through implementation concepts and change management.

Day 2 – Drive Innovation and Build Sustainable Business Models
Understand how innovation and emerging technologies, particularly Artificial Intelligence, are reshaping banking and financial services. Explore why innovation often fails, how organisations can create value from new ideas, and what it takes to build innovation capabilities that scale. You will gain practical frameworks for innovation and business model development, hands-on experience applying them to real challenges, and a strategic perspective on how to embed innovation across products, services, and operating models to create sustainable competitive advantage.

Day 3 – Customer and Market Development
Put the customer at the center of new business development. Explore how to uncover customer needs, behaviors, and value in financial services, then act on them through segmentation, targeting, and positioning. You will gain practical frameworks for identifying attractive segments, deciding which customers to serve, and shaping a differentiated value proposition that wins and retains the right customers.

Day 4 - Financial Business Case
This session focuses on the critical intersection of strategic growth and financial discipline. It equips professionals with the practical analytical tools needed to optimize capital deployment and evaluate growth opportunities through the lens of risk-adjusted returns. Participants will learn to move beyond mere sales generation and think like corporate investors, ensuring every expansion initiative builds long-term enterprise value.

Day 5 – Design Your Business Model (Workshop)
This workshop day combines knowledge introduced throughout the week to design business models hands-on. We work on a teaching case to rehearse important concepts before using participants’ own businesses for crafting powerful value propositions and ideating revenue models. Students use popular strategy frameworks and tools to analyze markets, create customer value, and appropriate that value for their organization.
 

The Business Development Academy is designed for middle and senior managers responsible for business growth, innovation, and new product development. It is also ideal for entrepreneurs seeking to refine their managerial skills and transform innovation into sustainable business success.
 

With the Business Development Academy you will learn how to apply state-of-the-art tools to successfully develop your business and understand how to create value through innovation. You will examine the success of the German economy and how it is based on family-owned SMEs and mid-cap companies, as well as large corporations which produce high quality products and services. German companies are world-market leaders in various industries, in many cases competing amongst themselves for this leading position. Innovation is their key success driver. Throughout the course you will learn how to manage innovation successfully and how to bring your ideas to the market. You will also understand how to drive business growth in an increasingly competitive global business environment. Case studies on established German companies will deliver valuable insights into best practices and demonstrate how these companies completely transformed through innovation.
 

Lecture, discussion, individual and group exercises, case studies