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Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli, CEO and co-founder of team-based collaboration platform, Hibox, discusses how large organizations can boost productivity and stay innovative.
It is no secret that technology is changing rapidly, and many of the changes happening are major. Along with the quick rate of change is an underlying pressure felt by major corporations to keep up. This immense pressure has led to an innovation race sparking not only collaborations between startups and enterprises but to more and more enterprises adopting start-up like characteristics.
Startups, due to their small size, possess agility, allowing them to dream and produce on a whim. On the contrary, large enterprises have a harder time innovating quickly due to bureaucratic processes often put in place and therefore lack a forward-thinking edge.
Though it’s tougher for enterprises to innovate than startups, there are helpful tools and practices they can implement within their organizations to stay competitive in today’s ever-changing landscape. One way they are promoting employee creativity and innovative thinking is by implementing collaboration platforms.
Here are some of the ways enterprises can benefit from such platforms:
Inclusive Brainstorming Sessions
Every organization has its particular culture, office politics, physical office structures and more that play a crucial part in team 
members happiness and in turn, productivity. With employees all having come from different backgrounds and put into the same system, companies must implement a culture of sharing, openness, and acceptance; because after all, one crazy idea could lead to a major innovation.
In order to promote openness and idea sharing, enterprises have started integrating collaboration and chat platforms, as they have been proven to eliminate some of the fear and bias that often holds employees back from sharing ideas during in-person brainstorming sessions. Chat platforms include people in the conversation, gathering a wider selection of opinions from across the whole organization and leading to a greater possibility of discovering innovative ideas and new solutions – an end result desired by all.
Flattened Structure
As previously mentioned, a major advantage that makes startups superior at innovating compared to large corporations is agility. With a flat power structure, new ideas and suggestions don’t need to move up any chain of command to come to fruition.
Rather, they can be dreamt up, told to the decision maker, and implemented within a short period of time.
For organizations though, the more they grow, the harder and more complicated it becomes to make things happen, as communication lacks. The flow of information throughout an organization often takes time and can lead to misinterpretations and costly mistakes and often even the smallest teams who lack properly implemented communication technologies can experience the biggest problems. Introducing a collaboration platform will eliminate issues, as doing so allows for direct and group communication to happen with ease all in one secure place. Departments will be able to communicate instantly in order to resolve company-wide issues in half the time. This will lead to projects being completed faster and within a central communication channel than can be referred back to at any point.
The Best Talent, No Matter Where
Experts predict that by 2020, the majority of workers will be “remote workers”. In large, global corporations, this is amplified to an extreme and requires employees from all over the world to effectively work together. Collaboration platforms allow companies to recruit the right 
talent, no matter where they are in the world. For example, the Hibox team has employees working from 3 different continents and 9 different countries. How do we possibly stay on the same page? I don’t think we have to answer that one.
But, the truth is that remote employees can collaborate even when they’re not sitting around a conference table. How? By using a digital workspace that allows everyone to work together no matter where they are in the world. It’s even beneficial, as 91% of employees who work remotely claim to get more done.
Collaboration platforms make remote work possible by helping employees create schedules and working conditions that foster productivity and innovation. Even if a team isn’t 100% remote like some of today’s trendiest startups, allowing some flexibility to promote productivity has been made possible by collaboration platforms.
About the author: Mariano Rodriguez Colombelli is the CEO and co-founder of Hibox, a team-based collaboration platform that helps enterprises increase productivity and retain an innovative edge. Mariano has been working in the Enterprise Digital Transformation space for more than 10 years and has founded 3 companies, all of which are based in Europe and Latin America.
