The benefits of business Collaboration

by Startacus Admin

Collaboration. It does sound rather grand and also slightly alienating, especially as the word seems to have been hijacked as by the tech world. However, fear not - collaborations, whether it’s with scientists in a lab, Whizzkids on their laptops or Coldplay and Rihanna in a studio, all have a pretty simple premise - collaboration is about working together to achieve or reach a common goal or aim.

Collaboration within business is (apparently) all the rage at the moment, as small teams of work colleagues are shipped off to collaborate together, sometimes even potentially with the aim of redesigning or reinventing the whole company, system or product.

But what of Collaboration itself? Why is collaboration seen as a partner to innovation & development? Why is it important? We outlined some of the main advantages of business collaboration and it is perhaps worth considering how you can apply it to your own idea, startup or project:

Fosters Innovation
Chris Martin can sing melancholy alternative rock and Rihanna R&B styled pop, but together and add a few riffs, what fine tune may result? More importantly, what new style or genre of music may result? The same principle can be applied with business ideas and projects. By collaborating with others, using your own talents, but merging those talents together, who knows what innovation and creativity will result? Working on your own, most likely or not, a rather linear approach will be applied to a problem or aim. Working in collaboration, you may not just solve the problem, you might in fact create something new or improved.

Unifies Strengths
Even Superman had weaknesses. On your own, as a unit, you have so many strengths and capabilities, but also probably just as many weaknesses. By collaborating with others and utilising everyones skills, strengths and experiences, not only will you reach your goal, but you utilise everyone's talents and skills to the max in order to come up with the best possible solution or make the best possible product or service. Imagine it a little like building a house - you don’t usually get the bricklayer fitting the kitchen, however you need the bricklayer to first build the walls before you can add the other parts. However imagine if the bricklayer and the Kitchen Fitter were to work collaboratively on the project - the walls and the kitchen would be built well and perhaps even some innovative approach would result.

Improved Decision Making
Within business, how often have you, at the cold face of the business, wondered ‘how the devil that business decision was made by the bosses’. Flip that around the other way - why as the owner of a business, are you not involving the whole team, before big business decisions are made? By collaborating with a team of people, not only are you likely to come up with innovative solutions, but you are also more likely to identify problems and issues along the way, which will help create the very solution! (phew). As an individual you are more likely to think that every idea you have is a good idea - and it is only by asking the opinions of others that you often realise its’ downfalls.

Teamwork and Time
Collaboration at any level with a business, from the initial idea, through to the refinement of the product, can be of great benefit to not only the individual with the initial idea, but the collective group as a whole to make massive strides or developments in only a short amount of time. If everyone is allocated or self allocates tasks, the end result can be found in a much quicker time and in an much more effective way. Collaborating together can also mean that you feel more responsible for moving a project forward and therefore you can be more likely to do your part of the project or fix your part of the puzzle.

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Published on: 29th November 2012