It all began at QUALITANCE over ten years ago.
Q started with 2 young men in an university office, who had the crazy ambition to make this thing work. In the meantime, the team grew from 2 to almost 200 people who have a strong will to do better and better everyday.
From the business model shift to the increase of the number of employees. From the tiny, local office to the three global offices. Change is a constant. Reaching a decade gives us the chance to reflect on some of the greatest turning points of all this time.
So what did we learn in these 10 years?
Learn by Doing
We have this credo at QUALITANCE – doing is the best way of thinking. And we are 100% engineers when approaching innovation – we actually build revolutionary products and services that represent the next big break for companies. Innovating also involves rapid prototyping, our favorite way of “doing”.
Rapid prototyping helps me not getting too attached to ideas. I start working with an open mind, and when an idea comes up, I focus on validating it.
During the innovation workshop in Moscow
Since applying rapid prototyping, we changed our mindset. From trying to finish the execution of an idea, we rather work 30% of it, we validate it and we gather a lot of feedback until completion. This way, time is more efficiently spent and we obtain the best versions of our solutions.
Bogdan is one of our veterans in rapid prototyping. He also manages to push his team in following this principle during workshops.
“Rapid prototyping helps me not getting too attached to ideas. I start working with an open mind, and when an idea comes up, I focus on validating it. After some validation processes, the idea is far better than the initial one. Then, I start perfecting the idea. This is what I encourage my team to do during workshops and even in current projects”, says Bogdan, web developer.
Seeing how, in 2 days, your idea discussed with the client turns into a prototype – this gives you a great confidence.
There are major advantages for the QUALITANCE team and the client. “I found out how happy people are when they can validate their ideas this fast. Then, seeing how, in 2 days, your idea discussed with the client turns into a prototype – this gives you a great confidence”, explains Serban, iOS developer.
Have a deeper look at rapid prototyping in this article.
Think Global
We have constantly proved our creativity for clients all over the world. Innovation workshops made us conquer the world, literally! Here are some examples: last year, our team travelled to Moscow for a giant retailer, where we had to rethink the way people do shopping, using next gen technologies. Later on, San Francisco came in line – our team developed for Virgin Sport a prototype platform through which sports became a truly engaging experience.
The team, enjoying San Francisco last summer
Working with people from different countries and cultures, we learned how to establish a good communication, no matter the background or personality. It’s tested: honesty and patience always do their jobs and build healthy relationships, where both parts are happy.
“It’s easy for clients everywhere to see if their ideas work while being tested by real customers. Even the most vehement clients change their minds when they see their ideas don’t match users’ needs”, says Serban.
Also, collaborating with people all over the world, we managed to understand why they are acting or thinking in a certain way and what is important for each of them, based on the culture they come from. Our global approach helps develop our empathy for people – which is at the heart of user experience design.
Surround Yourself with Amazing People
We recently hosted QUALITALKS 7 at our HQ. Over the past years, our trademark events brought great speakers from around the globe to Bucharest, who tackled all kinds of hot topics – Google Glass, innovation, rapid idea devalidation, experience design and next-gen technologies, transhumanism, or artificial intelligence and machine learning.
Our guest at the latest QUALITALK was Dan Cautis (Georgetown University). Dozens of tech enthusiasts felt inspired by our tech talks and became loyal attendees. The future sounds great – there are so many brilliant people and fascinating topics we’re about to approach soon.
Have a glimpse of one of the QUALITALKS we had last year, about transhumanism:
QUALITALKS are the kind of events that helps us grow in time, with each piece of info we gather. You may not see the immediate result, but the valuable information we assimilate during the talks work like fuel for the innovative solutions we come up with further.
There might be ideas that seem coming from nowhere. Actually, they have their roots in QUALITALKS.
Dragos, our Data Scientist, has lots of words of appreciation for the last talk. “Ideas need time to be assimilated, then applied. There might be ideas that seem coming from nowhere. Actually, they have their roots in QUALITALKS”, says Dragos.
The same works for our guests: “People should not expect an instant revelation after these kind of talks. Instead, the events are full packages of benefits – listening to a quality speech, being surrounded and socializing with quality people – this makes QUALITALKS a community product”, adds Dragos.
Our Story in Pictures
Mike Parsons, our CIO, talking about the innovation era in QUALITANCE
Wonder what the first 10 years look like? The answer is above:
We recalled the most important moments of these years with a nice talk-show, at All Hands
But wait a second. We’re talking here about the brief QUALITANCE story. The complete story of the 10 years is not here, nor in the internal magazine or elsewhere. It can only be in people’s minds and hearts. You know what they say – the best is still unwritten…
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