What can businesses do now that they couldn’t 10 years ago?

Who’d have thought back in 2007 that we’d be carrying internet connected devices in our pockets, with access to any and all media we desired; and did any of us believe a driverless car was anything more than a tired plot from an old X-Files episode?

The rate of change in the workplace is exponential, who out there would have imagined that in just 10 years, the way we work, the way we collaborate with others, would have shifted so much, becoming so much simpler and faster too.

Certainly, two people in San Francisco did. 10 years ago, MIT (Massachusetts Institute of Technology) students – armed with a brilliant idea – launched a new start-up. A start-up they called Dropbox.

Since then competitor and market demands on business leaders have caused a rise in technology that improves productivity, collaboration and even innovation in the workplace. And we’re now at a point where flexible working, remote file sharing and online collaboration is common place in all types of businesses across Europe.

We’ve heard how the cloud is enabling production teams to employ only the best global talent, financial service providers to rethink their business models, and start-up businesses to create ‘amazing places’ to work. Things we couldn’t have dreamed of a decade ago.

These businesses aren’t alone either.

With more and more people implementing Dropbox inside their business, we’ve used our tenth birthday celebrations to ask 10 of our customers one question:

What can you do now in the workplace that you couldn’t 10 years ago?

We love their responses:

“We’ve been able to have one central location for our assets from day one. This means as we grow, our whole team has access to everything they need on the go. Everything is backed up which means less time worrying and more time building!”
Hugh Thomas, CEO, Ugly Drinks

“Our work has always been information heavy – we need to process a ton of information from different sources. Back in the day this was zip disks and CD-ROMs (hard to believe now), then came ftp (slow and totally unreliable) but gradually, the internet, mobile devices and light file sharing software like Dropbox has totally changed the game.”
Matt Quinn, Director, 401

“10 years ago, was almost exactly the beginning of my small business journey too. I used to wonder how on earth we could grow without an expensive office and worried about Wi-Fi access and broadband speeds. Now working life is so different – my team work all over the UK, creating a seamless content flow of video, live streaming, social media, interviews and feedback.”
Michelle Ovens, Director of Small Business Saturday

“As our offices are located across three different continents, a collaborative content sharing platform is essential for successful business operations. This way of working has improved over the last ten years. With Dropbox Business, we’ve been able to introduce a secure online collaboration platform, with the added benefit of no upfront infrastructure costs.”
Simon Ward, CTO at Prodigy Finance

“10 years ago, I was surrounded by paperwork, a bulging in-tray and hoped the hotel fax machine worked if I was on holiday with a pending deadline. Today work life is structured, and I can work from anywhere in the world, just from my phone.”
Mandy Bagot, Founder, Cloud Bookkeeping

“For us, speed is the number one asset we have. We’re a small team and we use technology to achieve growth through chat apps for team communication, file sharing and instant reporting.”
John McManus, UK Marketing Manager, KIND

“I’ve used Dropbox for about eight years and couldn’t do without it. To me, the biggest revolution of the last 10 years is file sharing.”
Oktay Tajahmady, Manager, Aneo

“Today, we can think in different formats – bringing together video, audio and paper trails to allow a project to develop organically and creatively. It allows us to share our process and goals with people who aren’t always present at the time – it’s revolutionary.”
Hope Dickson Leach, Co-Founder, Raising Films

“We can work from any place, at any time, on any device and ensure our team is always working on the latest version of documents. This gives us freedom in how we organise our work and freedom of mind. We can work together without being together, which is important for teamwork when you are an international organisation.”
Eefje Jonker-van Dun, Managing Director, Business Models Inc

Whatever your business, wherever you are, the last 10 years in technology has revolutionised working life. You can keep track of our birthday celebrations here this week by clicking here.