Like most people in technology, I don’t like the title of “Business Development Manager”, and I am not proud of my taste. This is a necessary position, and I don’t like it only because of my engineer-oriented prejudice. That led me to think about the root of my prejudice last night.

We humans are collectors. In many archeology site, many instruments have no better explanation other than ornaments. We love rice and pigs, because they can be stored. Thus, these stored surplus drove human society to survive through hard times.

In modern societies, we still value things that can last. Fine art, real estates, antiques and minerals captured large amount of fortune in our economy. As an engineer, we are proud that “we actually build things”. The difference between actress and waitress is that during a certain period of time, actresses can build up stored value through media storage technique whereas waitresses have nothing left.

That’s the same problem of business development personnel. They build up their professional network, but that is something cannot be materialized. You cannot point someone to something and argued that you have a sophisticated connections in such industry.

Well, that may not be true now thanks to Facebook and LinkedIn. biz-devs can now build up their social network in measurable way. If you are a radical thinker, that is not much different from coding or mining bitcoin (they are all in digital form, no physical goods are created in the process). The stored value in digital form already works, it is just matter of the time to apply more gaming attributes to it (badges, level-ups etc.).