No & Low Code Platforms as Knowledge Bridge to Develop Digital Innovations with Employees

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Public and private organizations are competing to offer the most innovative products and services. Nowadays, these are often digital in nature and are developed using digital tools. In recent years, organizations have established various internal and external innovation channels to create these innovations. These include conventional research and development departments, agile innovation units and, increasingly, the involvement of their own employees [1].
This is partly due to the fact that the design of (digital) innovations has become less complex thanks to more intuitive and widespread IT tools, such as online whiteboards (e.g. Miro or Conceptboard) and design tools (e.g. Figma or Adobe XD). As a result, their conception and development has become more accessible and the creation of non-functional prototypes is encouraged [2, 3, 4]. Especially in employee-driven innovation processes, a promising innovation idea poses the challenge of designing the implementation process for a functional or high-resolution prototype [5]. Implementation often fails due to a lack of programming skills among non-technical employees, who are unable to implement their ideas independently until they are ready for production. Many organizations do not have dedicated teams or IT developers who, in addition to their core tasks, have enough time to work co-creatively with the idea providers on the implementation of their ideas.

Against this backdrop, the aim of the NoLoCK project is to investigate and evaluate no- and low-code platforms and their limitations in comparison to native development. The aim is to find out whether these platforms are suitable as competence bridges in the context of employee-driven (digital) innovations. No- & low-code platforms make it possible to implement desired functionalities by combining functional blocks in a sequence flow. With low-code platforms, it is also possible to adapt or extend these function blocks with user-defined code or to create completely new function blocks.

Recently, generative artificial intelligences (genAI) such as OpenAI's ChatGPT have also been integrated into the workflow of employees. These genKIs can be used as a supplement to the aforementioned no- & low-code platforms to make it easier for employees to implement their ideas in functional prototypes. One possible application for genKIs is to integrate them into no- & low-code platforms to enable employees to explain the function blocks, generate code to extend the blocks or create completely new function blocks. This use case is also being investigated as part of the NoLoCK project.

In summary, the project looks at the usage and implementation limits of no- & low-code platforms in comparison to native development. It examines how these platforms can be explored as a skills bridge for people who have little or no programming skills and want to create digital innovations. Furthermore, it analyses how organizations can provide their employees with support tools for employee-driven innovation processes and the development of digital innovations with the help of no- & low-code platforms and AI.

In order to investigate and address these aspects, the NoLoCK project is based on a data-driven approach. Initially, a systematic literature review will be carried out that deals with no- & low-code platforms in various application contexts. In parallel, a market analysis and platform evaluation will be carried out to investigate current trends in these areas. The results of the first two steps will be used for a quantitative survey in various organizations that use no- & low-code solutions. Based on the results, an interview guide will be developed to conduct further interviews with experts and collect additional data on deployment scenarios, best practices and limitations. Finally, a laboratory study on no- & low-code platforms and genKI's will be conducted, in which different people will be asked to solve tasks with programming parts using the mentioned tools.
Based on the collected data, the challenges and limitations as well as the effectiveness of no- & low-code platforms as a competence bridge will be analyzed and application principles for the use of these platforms in employee-driven innovation processes will be developed.

And here the group in their own words (German): 
 
 

 
References
[1] Opland, L. E.; Jaccheri, L.; Pappas I. O. & Engesmo, J. (2020). Utilising the Innovation Potential – A Systematic Literature Review on Employee-driven Digital Innovation. In: Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2020) 
[2] Yoo, Y.; Henfridsson, O. & Lyytinen, K. (2010). The New Organizing Logic of Digital Innovation - An Agenda for Information Systems Research. In: Information Systems Research (21:4) 
[3] Nambisan, S.; Lyytinen, K.; Majchrzak, A. & Song, M. (2017). Digital Innovation Management: Reinventing Innovation Management Research in a Digital World. In: MISQ (41:1), pp. 223-238. DOI: 10.25300/MISQ/2017/41:1.03 
[4] Leible, S.; Ludzay, M. & Nüttgens, M. (2021). Ein IT-gestützter Innovationsprozess in der öffentlichen Verwaltung: Rahmenkonzept, Ideenmanagementsysteme und Online-Whiteboards. In: HMD Praxis der Wirtschaftsinformatik (58), pp. 1108-1128. DOI: 10.1365/s40702-021-00775-3 
[5] Krejci, D.; Iho, S. & Missonier, S. (2021). Innovating with employees: an exploratory study of idea development on low-code development platforms. In: Proceedings of the European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS 2021)