Att våga vara innovativ: En fallstudie om affärsutveckling av befintliga produkter i ett högteknologisk företag

Sammanfattning: High technology companies in Sweden spend a huge amount of money on research and product development in proportion to what they get back in earnings from their inventions. Product development has traditionally been regarded as much more important than business development. This thesis aims to point out the critical factors behind successful business development processes for high technology companies. We have chosen to make a case study of Hexagon, a highly successful and innovative company within the measurement technology business. Internal and external actors that are important for business development have been identified and interviewed in order to understand how ideas are developed and executed. We have found four key learnings from the case study that we believe are crucial for all business development processes; 1) monitoring trends on the market in order to capture interesting business opportunities, 2) developing and managing good relationships with distributors and wholesalers, as they represent the company to customers, 3) having a good management and an internal culture that inspires individuals to be creative, 4) creating a company culture that values effective internal communication and decentralized decision processes. These factors have shown to be essential for successful business development processes.