Business Development Manager

Business Development Manager, Innovation Unit (KTI)

Founded in 1910, KONE is a global leader that provides elevators, escalators and automatic building doors, as well as solutions for maintenance and modernization that add value to buildings throughout their life cycle. Our mission is to improve the flow of urban life and make our world’s cities better places to live by providing innovative solutions that help make people’s journeys safe, convenient and reliable. Our operations in over 60 countries around the world has helped us achieve our position as an innovation and sustainability leader with repeatedrecognitions by Forbes, Corporate Knights for clean capitalism and others.  

KONE’s vision is to create the Best People Flow experience by providing ease, effectiveness and experience to our customers and users. In line with our strategy, Sustainable Success with Customers, we will focus on increasing the value we create for customers with new intelligent solutions and embed sustainability even deeper across all of our operations. By closer collaboration with customers and partners, KONE will increase the speed of bringing new services and solutions to the market.

KONE Technology and Innovation Unit (KTI) is where we combine the physical world – escalators and elevators – with smart and connected digital systems. We are changing and improving the way billions of people move within buildings every day. We are on a mission to expand and develop new digital solutions that are based on emerging technologies.

Within KTI, the Innovation Unit is a cross-functional team of innovators who explore the world with curiosity and drive to bring innovations to customers of today and tomorrow. Deep user and customer understanding underpins our culture of experimentation. We often operate like an internal startup within a large company, combining speed, ownership, and entrepreneurial thinking. Ultimately, we deliver desirable end-to-end solutions at the intersection of people, technology, and business.

Technology and innovation careers - KONE Corporation

We are now looking for a Business Development Manager, Innovation Unit to join KONE Technology and Innovation (KTI) in Espoo, Finland.

In this role, you will operate at the forefront of innovation, acting as a business development lead or strategic product manager for new “zero-to-one” solutions, identifying, developing, and launching new products. You will combine customer insight, product vision, and business thinking to shape concepts, define roadmaps, drive commercial pilots, and prepare innovations for go-to-market and scaling.

Main responsibilities

• Get customer traction: Work directly with customers to uncover real problems, validate demand, and test willingness to pay. Build early traction and evidence of real demand through hands‑on customer work across discovery, piloting, and early market entry.

• Decide what to build: Own early business and product decisions by translating customer and market insights into clear choices on what to build and invest in. Define product vision, target customers, and success criteria, and prioritize opportunities based on business potential and learning.

• Sell first solutions: Take responsibility for turning MVPs into sellable solutions and closing the first sales. Personally drive paid pilots and initial customer deliveries to prove that solutions can be sold and used in real customer environments.

• Execute initial go-to-market: Carry solutions from early customer wins into market entry. Shape how new solutions are introduced beyond the pilot phase, and ensure they are ready to grow within a business line or progress toward a new venture or spinout.

The desired candidate will have

• Experience in customer-facing roles connected to innovations or new product introduction.

• Strong product ownership / product management capabilities, particularly with the ability to define product vision and roadmap – not just on a feature level, but on what drives customer and business value.

• Proven ability to work in execution-oriented roles, turning ideas into tangible outcomes.

• Strong people and stakeholder management skills, with the ability to influence and build trust across customers and internal teams.

• Experience leading early-stage validation (problem–solution fit, MVPs, pilots).

• Ability to translate technology, customer, and market trends into concrete business opportunities.

• Comfort with ambiguity and fast-paced environments, keeping momentum despite evolving direction.

• Experience working in both startup and enterprise SaaS environments is considered an advantage.

• Excellent communication and workshop facilitation skills in English; German or French is considered an advantage.

• Willingness to travel in Europe and globally and preference for face-to-face collaboration with customers and teams.

What can KONE offer you?
At KONE, we are focused on creating an innovative and collaborative working culture where we value the contribution of each individual. Sustainability, ethical business practices, and trust-based collaboration are integral parts of our culture. You will work in a highly dynamic innovation environment with the opportunity to shape solutions that impact customers globally.

At KONE, we are focused on creating an innovative and collaborative working culture where we value the contribution of each individual. Employee engagement is a key focus area for us and we encourage participation and the sharing of information and ideas. Sustainability is an integral part of our culture and the daily practice. We follow ethical business practices and we seek to develop a culture of working together where co-workers trust and respect each other and good performance is recognized. In being a great place to work, we are proud to offer a range of experiences and opportunities that will help you to achieve your career and personal goals and enable you to live a healthy and balanced life.

Read more on https://careers.kone.com/en/