Chloe Andries
TechInAfrica – Competition in the market is fierce. Young companies that embrace inventiveness and creativity develop, and such innovation occurs when leadership and teams come together in the pursuit of a common vision within a culture that highly values collaboration.
Here are four ways to build the foundation for collaboration and innovation in your start-up business:
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Establish a corporate mission
Contractors want their work to have value beyond material gain, and so do employees. They want to work with meaning and purpose, with the knowledge and confidence that they are striving to achieve the company’s defined goals and objectives.
Does your team have a clear and convincing vision? Inspire organizational commitment and achievement by setting firm objectives and painting a vision of your company’s overall goal.
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Adopt collaborative tools and technology
Our digital age has paved the way for a wide range of collaborative tools that entrepreneurs can use to collect, share, develop, enrich and refine their ideas. Such tools are important to foster collaboration. From project management to teleconferencing to team coding, here are some examples of intuitive and easy-to-use collaborative software that you may want to try:
Slack: Offering open communication through file transfer, instant messaging and private channels, this platform is very user-friendly. Its many features and integration capabilities make it very popular with developers and designers.
GoToMeeting: This popular videoconferencing tool enables real-time collaboration both internally and externally. Companies can schedule meetings, organize conferences and share screens with their customers, colleagues and customers via the Internet.
Quire: This cooperative and communal project management tool combines a Kanban board with a list of interrelated tasks to provide optimized teamwork and real-time digital collaboration. Its system allows team members to effortlessly prepare and coordinate assignments in a tree structure supported by the user interface.
Quip: Available in a mobile application and a desktop application, this collaborative tool allows users to work live and import different types of files. Team members working remotely will particularly appreciate its chat, checklist and automatic backup features.
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Promote a culture that encourages collaboration, creativity and innovation
With an established corporate vision, innovation thrives more freely when leaders adopt and support the team’s spirit of anticipation and experimentation. As you create and cultivate your new business, encourage creativity within your team by investing in creative initiatives. Above all, be positive and practice an open-door policy. Communicate openly and applaud comments from all levels. Listen carefully and give constructive feedback.
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Embrace individuality and self-expression
Collaboration is a matter of unity and works best when diverse ideas and perspectives are brought together to answer a question, solve a problem or overcome a challenge. Creating a safe space from the beginning for the various points of view within your new business means defending individual expression rather than uniformity. The unique potential and contributions of your employees are the reason you hired them.
Emerging companies that are ready to create a collaborative working environment from the beginning, where creativity and experimentation flourish, everyone benefits. Innovation occurs when collaboration is supported by the adoption of common goals and objectives, the encouragement and reward of a creative culture, and investment in collaboration tools and team-building activities. Focus on collaboration and innovation when starting your business and you will also benefit.
Source: Startupnation
