Flesh Them Out Instead!
You have some truly inspired ideas. Most of them come to you when your mind is otherwise idle; like when you are having your morning constitutional or sitting in traffic on your way to a meeting. Often these ideas get hastily jotted down on the back of an envelope, on a cocktail napkin, or they may get as far as a note on your cell phone. But what happens to them next?
It is vital that you have a system in place to evolve your ideas. It is these new strokes of genius, the ones that wake you up in the middle of the night, the ones that get you excited, that when developed keeps your company relevant. Without such a system, your creative, winning ideas may go by the wayside which means instead of flourishing, you lose some of your competitive edge. By fleshing out (instead of flushing down) your creative ideas, you create a vehicle for success.
So how do you flesh out these ideas? One option is to take them to your internal team. You’ve put together an amazing group of creative thinkers who know and understand your vision. Bringing them new ideas keeps them challenged and motivated.
There are drawbacks, however, to having your internal team take on the full responsibility of incubating new ideas. Bringing on new, untried projects detracts from the core mission because it dilutes the development team’s time, attention and talent. Your staff may become confused about priorities and lose focus. This not only puts your new ideas at risk, it may also put your core mission at risk. The problem is compounded if the staff is presented with too many such ideas. They may even lose confidence in you if they believe you lack concentration.
So how do you successfully advance innovation without burdening your team? How do you consistently nurture these ideas without killing productivity?
You certainly can’t shelve your inspirations until you finish development of your current projects. As stated above, that would be disastrous because without innovation there can be no growth. Killing these ideas due to other constraints will also discourage creative thinking.
This is where hiring an outside developer comes into play. Some may call it “outsourcing” but there is a huge difference between offloading code-for-hire and finding a developer partner to develop, build and test-launch your ideas.
The advantages of doing this are many!
First, an outside development team like Sofmen, will be able to quickly execute and test your vision. Whether it be a new product idea or a tool for internal use that will help make your business run more smoothly, your developer partner can build the core functionality needed to advance your idea without risk. Early adopters can then test it; creating a feedback loop for future development that can be done by your internal team.
Second, because an outside team will have experience working on a variety of projects in multiple industries, they also have an outside perspective. Having a new set of eyes will bring in new ideas and additional creativity that will help your company.
Third, internal teams tend to add features, expanding the project as they go, and consequently
increasing the timeline before launch. When utilizing an external team that is tasked with a narrow scope distractions are non-existent.
They have blinders on, so to speak, so they only see the end-goal.
Finally, there are no long-term costs. Projects are typically done on a contract basis with a limited scope. Whereas internal teams get paid for their time, external teams get paid to deliver. This results in a lower cost of execution.
Sofmen’s can take your vision and create it! The next time you have one of those back-of-the-envelope ideas; rather than risk it going into the circular file, give Sofmen’s dedicated incubation team a try. We will architect your product, streamline development and create a fully functioning system. Once the initial scope of the project is complete, we will work with your internal team and allow them to take the reins.
