Effective teamwork with great hard skills and soft skills is key for growing and sustainable startups, said expert.
Chamluck Khoonpolkaew, innovation expert at Thailand Productivity Institute said good teamwork is a factor of successful startups. Accessibility to supporting sources of government and private sector also allows startups to incubate and create innovations delivering prototype products to serve the market.
A startup which can be set up as a company and interesting for investors will be able to raise funds, but they must have a co-founder who has business skill. With a strong teamwork, co-founders will have time to create new ideas for their products growing and sustainable business.
A good teamwork must possess both digital skills and soft skills, work well with others, critical thinking, risk assessment, business planning, complex communication, negotiation and business management in finance and marketing. Importantly, they need to regularly reskill and upskill.
Moreover, startups must be able to foresee the future economy because the wall of technology and human labor was damaged due to a lower cost of technology and innovation. In the future, production process will more rely on technology and innovation.
The economy is now moving toward a crossroad of investment, firstly, moving manufacturing base and upgrading technology and innovation. By maintaining the manufacturing process but move the operation to neighbor countries such as Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar due to their lower labor cost, as a result Thailand will be lacking of labor from neighborhood. Secondly, the operations are still in Thailand while replacing human labor with technology and innovation by upgrading manual machines with robotics or artificial intelligence through hiring skilled and knowledgeable workers as engineers and software developers.
Chamluck added that investment in the future must focus more on the value through a combination of technology and creativity leading to a “make less get more”. Large businesses tend to set up subsidiaries to develop technology and innovation for digital transformation, by setting up an internal research and development division, restructuring by hiring people with digital skill instead of promoting people internally, or making a joint-venture with a global company. In Thailand, a large retail business partnering with a big Chinese e-commerce player investing in the country, and some invest directly in startup business in order to bring innovation from startups serving their businesses. Startups therefore must be able to present their innovations and business potential to achieve the business venture.
