Companies look for tech inspiration outside of the IT department
Companies are looking outside of the traditional IT department for inspiration and ways to tackle their skills shortages.
According to an IBM study, 80 per cent of enterprises are forming new partnerships with 'citizen developers' to try to close the skills gap for application development and "to drive greater collaboration and innovation across cloud, analytics, mobile and social technologies".
IBM describes citizen developers as an "emerging group of industry professionals" who create new business applications and help with IT decisions as a side venture, outside of their regular work responsibilities.
The survey found that 40 percent of all organisations still report moderate-to-major skills gaps across cloud, analytics, mobile, and social technologies — despite these technologies being recognised as the key to innovation.
Among the innovations being increasingly adopted by organisations is crowdsourcing which IBM says organisations are using to develop "ideas and technology assets with customers, partners and academia [to] drive deeper engagement for positive results". Hackathons and 'application challenges' are also being used to find new ideas.
The survey result is based on responses from more than 1,400 IT and business decision makers in 15 industries across five continents.