Innovate as a starter with these 5 skills

  • Esther Riphagen
  • Edited 22 November 2022
  • 1 min
  • Managing and growing
  • Digitalisation

Do you want to be a leader in a new market? A magnet for new employees? That is possible! Without expensive machines or difficult applications for funding. Develop 21st century skills and invest in the talent of you and your team.

Top 5 skills to conquer the market as a startup

1. Be creative and innovative

Will we still drive in a few years? Will we still pay via a bank? Who knows. But to have a healthy business in a few years, you need good ideas and plans now. So, fantasize, discuss, or meditate for the best ideas. And then just do it, learn from your mistakes, adjust, and continue. A practical model for this is the lean startup method.

2. Solving bundles of problems

‘Solving problems on your own’ is a must on each CV. Whether it is a situation in which a product does not do what you want. Or your ICT- system has been hacked or you experience a data breach. Problems are often complex: one problem is usually connected to another. The same goes for sustainable entrepreneurship. Because how do you make clothes out of waste? You will run into 1001 challenges.

3. Make digital and data part of your company’s DNA

Customer data, browsing behaviour, clicking behaviour on your website, and sensors in your machines. This gives you valuable information. But what can and/or should you do with it in your company? To discover this, it is important that everyone has digital skills. Not only as a defence against cybercrime. But also because ICT- innovations are increasingly mainstream. Such as internet of things or cryptocurrency. Challenge yourself; will your company be a data company?

4. Collaboration in entrepreneurship

Collaboration is popular. Because together you know more, you have more, and you can do more. That is why many entrepreneurs develop new products together in co-creation and zzp’ers take care of their clients with their cooperative. They share knowledge, make concessions, share the profits and the concerns.

Read more about collaborating successfully.

5. Use your moral compass

It is no longer a touchy-feely subject: ‘doing something good and useful’. Getting rich at the expense of the climate is ‘not done’. Young people are standing up for the climate in large numbers. Also, the group of social entrepreneurs is growing.

Example from the field

Ev Liu combats plastic waste disposals in oceans with sustainable disposable drinking straws (in Dutch).

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