“Innovation is at the heart of the company’s success.” This sentence by Eric Ries, author of the book The Lean Startup (2011), is an important starting point for any type of institution. At first glance, it reminds us that in a society in constant transformation, in order to remain alive and competitive in the market, developing innovative businesses, capable of truly making people’s lives easier is fundamental.
Startups, scale-ups, and corporates have this goal in common. Therefore, through technology, they seek ways to improve, increase and innovate processes, products, and services. This is an exercise that requires expertise and a lot of discipline and, of course, extra doses of courage, authenticity, and entrepreneurship.
However, the innovation journey does not have to be undertaken alone. At SoftDesign, we combine experience, strategic vision, and a Collaboration Culture to deliver the best products. In this sense, in the following article, we explain how we can help your business become more innovative, from idea to result.
Startups: Developing Your New Digital Business
According to Ries, “a startup is a human institution designed to create a new product or service under conditions of extreme uncertainty”. In other words, if the journey of creating startups is full of doubts and risks, it is essential to seek support throughout the entire process, from investigation and analysis, whether on market or target audience; up to software development. After all, the main objective is to drive new products and services to market-fit.
Finding a market and developing a product capable of satisfying it may seem like something simple, but it is not. Currently, about 90% of startups end up not surviving their first years. To minimize this risk, we offer services that support the entire journey of creating new digital businesses:
- In our Product Conception service, we develop the business model and the product idea, exploring the problem it solves, identifying users and defining the value proposition. To achieve this, we use Design Thinking, Lean Startup, User Research, and UX Design approaches.
- In Product Experimentation we create prototypes or No-Code/Low-Code MVPs to validate business models, considering the feedback from the first users, which allow us to test the product’s acceptance in the market.
- In addition, we also support startups in the Development of their digital solutions, using the best technologies, always with squads that work with the Agile Method.
To evolve through all these phases, it is important to have skills and expertise in different areas. Therefore, teams formed by multidisciplinary and diverse professionals are much more than a must-have to develop innovative businesses.
In real life, a startup is a world of possibilities, where everything happens simultaneously: the creation of new features, operational adjustments, attracting new customers, and marketing strategies. With the ideal partner, these challenges can be overcome.
Scale-ups: Accelerating Your Product
In the case study The Scale-Up Report, Sherry Coutu (2014) defines scale-ups as “companies that sustain long periods of rapid expansion”, as they have an average growth in job creation (or turnover) of more than 20% per year over a period of three years. For the author, this type of business drives economic advancement by allowing a greater number of companies to reach the stage of global scale.
Unlike the startup, a company in the scale-up stage already has a validated and more sustainable business model. At the same time, scaling a digital product is a decision that implies changes and challenges. After all, once you reach this stage, growing pains quickly begin to surface. To overcome the limits of scale and boost the product, it is necessary to work on solving Design, Architecture, Product Marketing, and Cloud bottlenecks, for example.
At SoftDesign, in addition to the Software Development service, we also work with several Consulting services in these key areas:
- Design: we create or improve the experience of your users, through User Research, User Experience, and User Interface;
- Architecture: based on technical objectives to be achieved or impediments related to stability, continuity, or scalability, we propose possible solutions;
- Marketing: we evaluate strategies, personas, attraction, and conversion channels and suggest a specific go-to-market plan;
- Cloud: we promote collaboration between development and maintenance functions, working with the largest providers: AWS, GCP, and Azure.
To accelerate innovative businesses and create a competitive advantage over the competition, it is essential to scale safely and with quality. After all, growing digital products are under pressure, as they need constant deliveries. In this sense, it is necessary to develop methods and tools that help work organizations in such a way that it is possible to increase the rates of productivity and predictability.
Corporates: Digital Transformation In Practice
The search for innovation affects all types of companies, including well-established ones. Corporates also need to develop processes, while improving and expanding their offer of products and services. This is one of the main strategies to stay alive and competitive in a market full of players that were already born and fully adapted to the digital world.
According to Franco (1991), “a company is any entity established under any legal form for the exploitation of an economic activity, whether commercial, industrial, agricultural or the provision of services”. For these businesses, the challenge is to maintain the essence by sustaining operations that are already well-established and in operation, while creating a more disruptive future, capable of keeping the organization profitable and attractive among the next generations of customers. To achieve the best of both worlds, collaborative innovation is an important ally.
In this sense, we can support your organization with Agile Consulting, which accelerates the adoption of agile methods, through mentoring, to transmit our knowledge in frameworks such as Scrum, Kanban, and DevOps to your team.
In addition, we work with Outsourcing, completing development squads with high-performance professionals, who work in the areas of Software Architecture, Programming, Quality Assurance, UX/UI Design, Products, and Projects. This is an essential resource for companies with an in-house IT team, which suffer from demand fluctuations, often requiring a professional with specific hard skills.
We know that the challenges of innovating in well-established businesses are diverse, but being part of an innovative business team has its advantages. One of them is constant learning. With that in mind, don’t leave your corporate heritage and leadership lost in the past.
Let’s innovate together.
We know that innovative businesses generate complex challenges that require a lot of understanding of the product or service in question. Moreover, in contemporary society, consumer habits and behaviors change as fast as the technologies in use. Therefore, understanding it in its essence is a key strategic factor that allows us to launch products that will actually be used by users.
Count on us to create transformative digital solutions with design, strategy, and technology. At SoftDesign, we have the best option to meet your needs, as we work with startups, scale-ups, and corporates in a personalized way. Fill out the form below and chat with one of our experts.
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