Wanted: Innovators (And It’s Okay If They Fail Sometimes)

 

By Cyndee Miller

No one could have possibly made it through this pandemic unchanged—as a person or as a professional. Existing skills have been put to the test and new ones were developed along the way. Sometimes it was something relatively simple like mastering the mute button. Other times, it was a gamechanger, like learning no-code and developing an app or two.

The basic idea? To move forward, we all had to let go of business as usual. That includes letting go of the antiquated notion that somehow you can pursue breakthrough innovation without a massive flameout every now and then. It happens. It’s how you respond that matters.

“Failure is the best teacher,” said Wladimir Klitschko, PhD, as he opened PMXPO, the latest in PMI’s Virtual Experience Series. An Olympian gold medalist at age 20, the heavyweight boxing champion has consistently used his losses an opportunity to learn.

These days, he’s an author and business leader—and was more than ready to go a few rounds on overcoming challenges to transformation with PMI President and CEO Sunil Prashara. “I love challenges. I eat them for breakfast, lunch and dinner. That’s my food for thought, for life, for energy, for everything,” Klitschko said.

He outlined four principles for transformation: focus, ability, coordination and endurance. And through his Klitschko Foundation, he’s driving that message home to young people: “The more they learn, the more secure they’ll feel,” he said. “The more knowledge they have, the better they’ll execute their plan.”

Part of that knowledge base will no doubt be linked to emerging tech. But digitalization was created by people to simplify life, Klitschko said, and we shouldn’t forget the human side of technology.

That means developing technology that actually delivers value. And one of the emerging ways of doing that is through citizen development, using low-code/no-code platforms to build apps without software expertise—and to do it significantly faster and at a fraction of the cost.

It’s like when your boss says: Don’t bring me problems, bring me solutions. Well, citizen development “allows you to bring an actual solution,” said PMI’s Chief Strategy & Growth Officer Dave Garrett.

Citizen development isn’t new, but much like agile 10-15 years ago, it’s been held back by concerns about maintaining control and transparency. That’s changing as more organizations adopt low-code/no-code strategies and establish greater governance.

Let the citizen development revolution begin.

“In the past we had users in spreadsheets working in an isolated fashion,” said Manpower Group’s Eric van Antwerpen. “With maturity, we’ve seen it evolve into more of a treasure box than Pandora’s box.”

Some of this comes down to the basic rule of supply and demand: “I believe everyone needs to learn to code, but it’s not going to happen,” said Microsoft cloud advocate Dona Sarkar. Citizen development is a way to empower teams to get to the business problem—with guardrails.

It’s a future of work that will require hyper-collaboration. The next generation of citizen development “isn’t just citizen developers work over here and professional, traditional coders work over here,” said Sarkar. There will be fusion developer teams, in which citizen developers work on front-end things while traditional developers work with IT teams. 

The widespread adoption of low-code/no code is also helping companies uncover hidden potential in their employees, said Qrew Technologies’ Stefan Quartemont. “The future of citizen development is building strong teams and engaging in rapid problem solving.”

Yet while there’s a genuine curiosity about citizen development, National University of Ireland Galway’s Noel Carroll said companies want quantitative evidence. “We really need to showcase the evidence behind this. What’s the return on investment?” he said. “There are some pieces of evidence out there, but we need to make it much more transparent for industries that are flirting with the idea of citizen development but haven’t really been convinced yet.”

Citizen development needs to deliver. And as with any innovation, the path to ROI is loaded with roadblocks.

So what will it take for project leaders to put up a good fight when faced with inevitable challenges? A little patience and some ingenuity, said Prashara.

“There’s hope for a more united future everywhere, but we’ll need to be incredibly patient and find new ways of working to help us become better at what we do,” he said.

If you missed out on the action or want to catch it all over again, PMXPO is available on demand. And don’t miss the next Virtual Experience Series on 2 June.

How are you exploring innovation and new ways of working?