Southeast Asia is experiencing a profound digital shift, transforming not just how we work, but also in how we drive innovation. While remarkable progress is evident in the region’s digital economy, projected to reach US$1 trillion by 2030, many businesses still face an urgent need for more digital solutions.
Even for those with access, adapting to those solutions has always been a tough ordeal within companies. This has led to bottlenecks where non-technical teams had ideas to improve internal processes but lacked the tools or programming knowledge to implement them.
However, the digital transformation sweeping across Southeast Asia, today, isn't solely being orchestrated by IT departments or the vibrant startup community anymore. It’s also being shaped by the everyday employees who understand the daily grind best, the ins-and-outs of their work and customers better than anyone else.
Now, with the new advancements in AI technology, those employees can become app creators themselves without needing to wait for IT teams to deliver new tools or fix processes that could cause hold ups and missed opportunities. This is where citizen developers come into play.
Low-code and no-code platforms were the first step. In fact, with the addition of AI, studies have anticipated that at least 80 percent of LCNC app users will be from outside IT departments, moving citizen development from a niche experiment to a standard part of how companies operate. These tools allow non-technical employees to build simple apps, like inspection forms, claims dashboards, or approval workflows, using visual drag-and-drop interfaces.
Unlocking the potential of citizen development
While the widespread adoption of AI across the development cycle accelerating, and with generative AI taking no-code and low-code tools becoming available, traditional bottlenecks are now breaking open.
To illustrate how this plays out, imagine a mid-sized manufacturing company that had long relied on spreadsheets and emails to manage compliance tracking and interdepartmental workflows. What once took weeks of back-and-forth for audit preparation, frontline employees outside of IT were able to build their own custom compliance solution with just a few lines of text prompts.
Without a single line of code and within days, manual processes like documentations, tracking and reporting were replaced with a streamlined digital workflow that centralised data and improved visibility across teams.
This new approach is called “vibe coding”, bringing productivity to another level by making the interface conversational. Instead of manually putting components together, employees can simply say what they want and AI handles the heavy lifting. It's a collaboration between human intuition and machine precision.
And this shift isn’t limited to enterprises alone. Around the world, individuals are harnessing vibe coding to build products at a pace once thought impossible. In fact, a standout example comes from an 18-year-old creator who took on the challenge of vibe coding and built a social playground app, without any engineers, marketing budget, or venture capital backing.
While the results were striking with hundreds of thousands sign-ups and generated millions of impressions from user interactions, the real significance lies in what this shift represents. Digital tools no longer require teams of developers—they can begin as a single idea, expressed in everyday language.
The impact extends well beyond faster development cycles or cost efficiencies. It sparks a new culture of experimentation and responsiveness. Regular employees can now digitise their operations without long waiting times while bringing the needed flexibility to parts of the business that require better efficiency.
- Tsubasa Nakazawa, Managing Director, Kintone Southeast Asia
Especially for SMEs and businesses that often operate without huge IT departments or massive software budgets, this capability is a game-changer.
Reshaping talent for the new AI era
Yet, with this exhilarating wave of empowerment comes an urgent need for balance. When employees who aren't tech experts start building important business apps, companies also need to think carefully about how these apps are managed and kept secure.
While we are increasing seeing reports that show a shift in demand for roles like software developers due to AI automation, it does not mean that tech experts are becoming any less relevant. Instead, what businesses need from their tech talent is changing. Their roles should evolve from writing every single line of code to a higher-level and more strategic function: overseeing AI-generated code, designing the larger structure of how all their systems connect, and managing crucial data security.
IT teams need to move away from being gatekeepers to enablers, creating "safe zones" where innovation can flourish within clear boundaries. These could include automated compliance frameworks, real-time alerts for risky data use, and built-in policies around privacy and integration.
Crucially, training and skill-building programs must go hand-in-hand with giving people access to these new tools, making sure employees are not just empowered to create but are also well-informed about responsible digital practices.
Across Southeast Asia, various government initiatives and digital economy blueprints are actively encouraging businesses to adapt and adopt digital advancements. However, truly sustainable digital ecosystems won't just be built by policy; they'll need to be forged by empowering every single person within an organisation to contribute to its digital future, securely and intelligently.
As global tech giants escalate their investments in local data centers and as AI-driven platforms become ever more mainstream, our region is exceptionally well-positioned to lead this citizen development movement, especially among our vast network of SMEs.
Tsubasa Nakazawa is Managing Director, Kintone Southeast Asia
