Igniting innovation through creative collaboration

Talented, passionate and hard working individuals aren’t the only thing required to build a great product with successful forward-thinking companies – fantastic digital products are the result of creative collaboration, not individuals.

Creative collaboration doesn’t only help smaller creative businesses like us – it works brilliantly for digital giants like Google, Twitter and Facebook as well.

In Silicon Valley, software engineers are encouraged to work together, in part because studies show that groups tend to innovate faster, see mistakes more quickly and find better solutions to problems. Studies also show that people working in teams tend to achieve better results and report higher job satisfaction.

Currently it feels like one of the most exciting times to work in the digital industry.  New technologies have never before evolved at such breathtaking speed. Only six years ago Virtual and Augmented Reality were just buzzwords exchanged by some geeks on Twitter and Hackernews.  Yet now it’s more than likely you already own a VR/AR enabled device in your pocket and at Engine Creative we have been championing these ‘new reality’ experiences since our first AR project for TopGear back in 2011.

Creative collaboration (teamwork) and learning are two of the values that we at Engine Creative strongly believe in. Combining these pillars allows us to stay on top of the game and helps us retain our status as one of the most innovative digital agencies in the UK. To support this level of collaboration and innovation we have introduced something we call ‘Knowledge Thursdays’.

Regular creative collaboration = constant innovation

Every Thursday towards the end of the day, our creative and digital teams gather together to collaborate and review recent inspirations.  We discuss design trends, debate coding paradigms and consider possible solutions for current projects. This is viewed through Apple TV connected to one of our gigantic projectors and supplemented with fresh beer from a local brewery – both solid incentives to enjoy our mid week evening.

During the week each of the team collects links and resources to present in front of their colleagues. There is just too much interesting stuff around to keep it to yourself; an inspiring poster design, a mind expanding book, a geeky Medium article or a game trailer released a few hours ago.  It’s hard to accurately compartmentalise the subjects that people come out with and two meetings are very rarely alike.

Our office hours are fairly standard, but Thursdays are always exceptional.  Conversations can carry on and sometimes we end up trapped in an unresolved maze of opinion that continues throughout the following week. It’s a fantastic opportunity to learn, discover new interests and find out about inspiring artists.  We’ll participate in creative and heated discussions around topics that might not have previously seemed to be that exciting.

Tangible teamwork

Every Friday we put together a list of recently discussed resources, links and videos.  After almost a year of keeping our Thursday tradition, we have assembled a large collection of fantastic resources picked by Engine Creative members.

At this point we would like to strongly suggest that every organisation tries out something similar. As most successful companies will acknowledge – great creative collaboration is responsible for the innovation of any business and something we facilitate with our own clients through our Discovery Workshops.

We are going to keep our Thursday meetings and who knows – maybe one day it will convert to a local digital meet-up.

In the meantime, please sign up to our newsletter (just enter your email address below) for all of the latest insights that have emerged from ongoing creative collaboration amongst the Engine Creative team.