Like my previous blog post for companies to remain competitive they not only need to invest in low code platforms. They also need to provide their employees avenue to express their creativity. One of the ways companies can help bring new ideas to the fore is by implementing a center of innovation and investing in a dedicated team of cross functional members who can work independently and also invite employees to join from a larger pool. In the Forrester article by Schooley and Cameron, they list three main points on how to nurture creativity:

1. Trust
2. Acceptance of failure
3. Open communication

For companies to foster a culture of creativity they must adhere to the three points listed above.

In a different article by Gartner published 11 years ago, author Jackie Fenn encourages companies to establish a formal discipline. Along with making it easy for everyone to contribute ideas outside of their immediate work. Thematically this article is very similar to the one mentioned above from Forrester. In essence companies need to overcome their hesitance and accept the ebbs and flows of such an organization in order to innovate. Many times, companies take this initiative as a first step but as they yield no results, they tend to fall in what Gartner calls trough of disillusionment.

The idea is to build solid change management around the innovation factory and not lose hope and stay the course. I have experienced this trough of disillusionment in my own professional experience. I strongly believe that companies need to invest back in their employees by cross training them. This would allow them to adapt to emerging and influential technologies with far better success rate than when they do without any investment in their employees.

 

The question for this blogpost number 7 is very interesting and goes as follows: Evaluating emerging technologies; influential technologies and the future. When I think of emerging technologies, I go back to early aughts when social media sites like Facebook and YouTube came on the scene. It is safe to say that those two sites have fundamentally changed the internet and how we consume media. For me one technology that I keep going back to which I strongly believe will help move enterprises forward is any variant of a low code platform. My personal favorite being Microsoft’s Power Platform.

With the advent of gig economy, and the added changes caused by the pandemic companies are moving away from the conventional model of in-house development shops. Fewer and fewer companies are retaining and in-house development team and instead opting for COTS solutions or outsourced model of development. In such a fluid environment, Power Apps provides the companies the opportunities to enable and empower citizen developers within the enterprise.

I have cited this example before in one my blogs and this is something which astonishes me every time, I read it. A security guard at Heathrow airport Samit Saini used the Power Apps to build an app from scratch which helped his team save 288 hours of manual data entry. This story in itself is amazing, Samit had no prior IT experience and he used the Power Apps platform to build a functional app which solved a major problem. The only issue I see with wider acceptance of Power Apps is Micrsoft’s complex licensing regime. Nevertheless, enterprises would be well served to introduce their workforce to low code platforms. This will encourage people to learn a new skill and also help resolve problems they face in their day-to-day routine.