The purpose of this contribution is to show how Smart and Medium Enterprises (SMEs) can adapt their capacities to a higher level of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity (VUCA) in their environment. We have reasons to believe that a traditional management of SMEs would be unable to effectively cope with a dynamic business environment and disruptive changes in market conditions induced by internet and digitalization. An agile, collaborative team approach will prove to be superior to traditional management in SMEs. A collaborative mode of management of SMEs, using the resources and capabilities of all members of the organization, is needed. For the change towards an agile, collaborative management approach we propose the “learning to grow”-methodology to launch an organizational learning process that enables owner and employees to create this agile working culture step by step. A special feature of the methodology is that the change process is based on a sequence of learning projects, so that the speed of the change can be connected with the growing capabilities of those involved. On the one hand, it is a tool for teams to enhance their collaboration through shared knowledge. On the other hand, the implementation becomes an item for a mutual learning project, because of the high requirements of a successful implementation. A consistent, long-term application of the methodology is leading to a substantial expansion of the capabilities of SMEs. Through the integration of the employees into the management process and a wider share and usage of knowledge, the organization is able to accomplish more innovation and more growth. This contribution presents fresh experiences from the project “CollaboTeam”, which started in February 2017. We want to share our insights of the challenges to implement collaborative software solutions, with the aim of realizing an agile, collaborative work approach. The outcome of this application is a suitable update of the Methodology “Learning to grow”. It has been developed in 2008 in a network with German SMEs and has been used and improved by many SMEs since then. The transfer and adaption of the methodology in other business contexts in Spain and South-America has been successful as well (North / Varvakis 2016). We want to illustrate how to support the implementation and use of collaborative software with the ”learning to grow” methodology, in order to create an agile, team-based work approach, which is adequate in responding to a VUCA environment.