Business development and management in Plastics companies

A project financed by the Region of Southern Denmark and the Danish Agency for Science and Innovation.

Current business development is about orchestrating many different people with different tasks at different levels in the organization to create long-term value. It places a high demand on the manager and management in general. The manager needs to be able to accommodate different approaches in relation to individual situations while everyone in the organization promotes and supports the future direction.

An example: Peter Petersen manages a medium sized plastics company with 100 employees. It is difficult to find time for business development.  The daily operation ‘drives’ all his activities. At the same time, Peter can see and feel the influence of new business models where strategic collaborations appear on the market, raw material prices run up and down and valued employees leave the company and go to competitors. Peter can see a need for a more long term business strategy, where he can drive the daily operation – not the other way around, as it is today, but he finds it difficult to divorce himself from the daily operations and does not know how to set about making a change. ‘The daily operation keeps driving him’.

Many Danish plastics companies exist on a high technological level. However, employment in this sector has shown a greater decline than is average for the Danish production industry. This suggests that it is not enough to focus on technological development – business development is just as important. The combination of technical and business development is an overlooked potential for innovation and growth and forms the basis for a new, more long-term model for business development.

The universities can create a forum where the latest knowledge about business development gained from research can be met by the companies’ specific needs and technical development potential.

In this way, a space for inspiration and reflexion together with other companies in the same field can be created. In other words, a space can actively be created to discuss opportunities, choices and specific implementation. This allows long-term business development to ‘drive the daily operation’.

On this basis, the innovation network PlastNet, facilitated by Plast Centre Denmark, in 2012 went into collaboration with the University of Southern Denmark (Department of Environmental and Business Economics, Associate Professors Svend Ole Madsen and Tove Brink) to expand the potential for innovation and growth in plastics companies through a project aimed at developing a more long-term business approach for plastics companies. The project was named “Business Development for SMBs in the Plastics Industry” and it was carried out in collaboration with four small and medium sized businesses (SMBs). The project ran for 2 years and was officially finished in 2014.

An article in Plastpanorama (December 2015) reported the results of the project and the surprising focus that came from the use of social media.

DMN members can read publications about the project in Danish here >

Based on this research, participants from the University further presented an academic research paper on the use of social media in the B2B context of the international innovation conference ISPIM June 2015 in Budapest. Additionally, a scientific journal article on the subject is planned, and research will continue with the hiring of a Ph.D. scholar.

For further information, please contact:

• Dorte Walzl Bælum
• Network Director
• B.Sc. Chem. Eng., M.Sc. in Business
• M: 60 35 19 90
• E: dwb@dmn-net.com