Perspectives

3 Reasons We Are Inspired And Excited For the Future of Citizen Development

Written By: Matt Lieberson
December 22, 2020
3 min read

There are only so many ways to say that 2020 was a difficult year. Moments of inspiration could often seem difficult to find – but luckily, our community was sure to provide them.

What kept us going this year was how our community of citizen developers responded. We saw over 650,000 users leveraging the capabilities of over 55,000 apps, built by more than 9,000 builders. And these were designed to solve any number of problems, quickly and without taking time away from other, critical transformation initiatives. And the creative problem-solving of our community is what has us ready and looking forward to what is to come in 2021.

Heading into 2021, here is what excites and inspires us about the future of citizen development after seeing what our creative, crafty community of citizen developers have achieved in 2020.

An increased focus on operational agility

Coming in to 2020, nobody could possibly be ready for the tidal wave of constant change and new circumstances. It’s no surprise then that Harvard Business Review Analytic Services found a 33% increase in organizations viewing improved business resiliency as a top goal of digital transformation efforts when compared to before the start of the Covid-19 pandemic.

But the future of business success goes beyond being resilient. Next level resiliency is operational agility – the way a company can flex and adapt its operations, technology, and information to evolve and match new business requirements. Be it market dynamics, competitive environment, or challenges in the world at large, operational agility means being ready to make quick decisions, leverage your technology, and pivot on a dime.

Being a part of our customers’ journeys to become more resilient and achieve operational agility is what drives us – when organizations are more stable and ready for anything, they can better weather change and not just survive turmoil but thrive in it.

Citizen development solving problems in communities

One of the most thrilling outcomes of 2020 has been how many different problems that citizen developers have sought to solve with no-code solutions. And as much as seeing consistent success in particular industries, watching the potential of business lead development stretch into new innovative solutions is inspiring and exciting. From issues in communities like disaster relief and food waste to reducing 911 response times for city first-responders and even rollout plans for Covid-19 vaccines, no-code is being used to solve a plethora of challenges.

As we saw in our Virtual Hackathon, citizen developers can bring the impact of no-code development into their communities. We are passionate about empowering people closest to issues with the tools and capabilities to solve those issues – and the more problems that we see solved, the more inspired we are.

Helping teams get back to work – for the present and the future

While the difficulty of 2020 won’t magically disappear when we break out our new calendars, there is certainly a glimmer of light at the end of the tunnel.

During the most fraught, uncertain moments of 2020, Quickbase users were rapidly developing unique ways to navigate their new, remote environment. Citizen developers created over 750 new applications designed to solve the challenges of becoming a remote workforce almost instantaneously, for problems like managing facilities while remote, tracking employee health, and ensuring resilient supply chains.

And for the future, with teams looking to plan returns to their offices safely and securely, it has been exciting to look at the ingenuity these teams are using to prepare for that eventual day where they can prepare for all of the new challenges to come.

Matt Lieberson
Written By: Matt Lieberson

Matt Lieberson is a Content Marketing Manager at Quickbase.

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