Why promoting R&D is beneficial for teams
It is perfectly clear that, when working with engineers, developers, designers, testers, etc, companies are somewhat responsible for promoting and stimulating creativity and curiosity. Although there are differences between people, usually the mind of someone working in software development likes to be triggered and challenged all the time.
Challenging teammates and colleagues is important for several reasons: to take the mind of a specific project for a while, to learn new technologies or business, to venture and risk into the unknown, to give opportunity to create, which means (by the same order), to bring knowledge to that project, to be updated, to thrive and succeed, to build something new. This feelings involves us all, and it is what makes us wake up in the morning and put all our efforts into what we do.
By advocating Research & Development in our company means that we have much more than just a project, a client or a pay check in the end of each month. It means an opportunity to create and think differently, or perhaps you meet new people with the same passions and create new and surprising friendships.
At velv we promote R&D. We are currently engaged in a few different projects (around 4 or 5), with universities in Europe or other partners and our teams are welcome to be involved and contribute. And we travel and present our ideas across Europe, we talk about e-health and cybersecurity and how this 2 completely different areas of study, can be combined to build something that nobody realised possible.
We also accept challenges, new ideas that our people would like to promote or bring to life. Because working in projects can be an up and down in terms of motivation, by allowing our teams to contribute in this challenges, at least they know that, here, we like to do “stuff” and take risks.
In short, research and development basically helps to stimulate creativity of our teams, which translate into motivation and a sense of accomplishment when you finish something. And happy teams, means an even happier work environment. Isn’t this all we are looking for in a company?