Steven Rindner Offers a General Overview Of Corporate Development

Corporate development basically refers to the strategic decisions taken by a firm in order to restructure its business, as well as to achieve optimal organizational excellence. Steven Rindner mentions that almost every major organization has a corporate development team that is focused on planning and implementing strategic decisions that are focused on growing and restructuring the business, achieving optimal organizational excellence, as well as establishing strategic partnerships. The key aim of the corporate development team is to create opportunities for the firm with the help of actions like mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, and deals that leverage the value of the business platform of the firm.

Corporate development is basically needed by a company to create and execute innovative strategies that will help in harnessing its competitive advantage and expand its business prospects. As per Steven Rindner, corporate development is aimed at enabling companies to improve their financial and operating performance, while helping them to outperform their competitors as well. Corporate development teams aid companies to achieve excellence through the implementation of sophisticated strategies that allows it to both outperform their peers and their own past performance.

There are three major types of corporate development models or structured present that are followed by modern companies. A brief insight about each of them has been underlined in the following pointers:

• Centralized model: In most cases, corporate development tends to be a centralized function as it provides professionals working in this department a birds-eye view of the organization, making it easier for them to spot opportunities and threats. This additionally allows the corporate development team to enjoy the advantage of being a first-mover in case an opportunity crops up, and take pre-emptive action against threats. Such a structure allows the corporate development team to plan deals with other businesses that fit well into the portfolio of the firm. However, it is vital to note that the centralized corporate development team does not work in complete isolation from other operational groups present within the firm.
• Hybrid model: Under such an organization model, the corporate development department firm comprises of just selected professionals. This lean team largely depends on a network of external and internal resources for providing subject matter expertise when it comes to evaluating potential partnerships and strategic transactions.
• Decentralized model: In the case of a decentralized corporate development model, there is no core team solely focused on this function. Instead, such a team is put together on a case-by-case, or ad hoc basis, and is made up of expert professionals belonging to diverse internal departments. The exact composition of such a corporate development team tends to be determined by the expertise required for the specific corporate development project.

As per Steven Rindner, the centralized model is the most popular model of corporate development, while the decentralized model is the least popular model. Companies may choose the ideal model for their operations as per their specific needs and requirements. The key aim of the corporate development team is to create opportunities for the firm with the help of actions like mergers and acquisitions, divestitures, and deals that leverage the value of the business platform of the firm.