PMI Belgium Blog

What if the key to your next project breakthrough didn’t come from a tool or framework within your industry—but from a sector you’ve never worked in?

In today’s hyper-connected, fast-evolving world, innovation often doesn’t arise from doing the same thing faster, but from doing it differently.

And that difference frequently comes from outside your usual reference frame.
A project manager in healthcare can learn from the precision of semiconductors.
An ICT leader can be inspired by the iterative resilience of automotive engineering.
The seeds of progress are often hidden in someone else’s soil.

What Cross-Industry Fertilization Really Means

Cross-industry fertilization refers to the transfer of methodologies, tools, or cultural practices across industries. At its heart, it’s about applying tested solutions from one context into another—especially where challenges appear unrelated at first glance.

This is particularly relevant for project managers. Despite operating in different sectors, we all wrestle with risk, resources, scope, stakeholders, and value creation. That shared DNA allows methods to travel more easily than we might expect.

Examples of Fertilization in Action

Semiconductor ↔ Healthcare

Both industries operate with high precision and low error tolerance. Tools like Failure Mode and Effects Analysis (FMEA) and Design of Experiments, widely used in healthcare, can strengthen risk control and validation processes in semiconductor projects—improving yield and reducing time-to-market.

Automotive ↔ ICT

As automotive development embraces Agile for both software and hardware, ICT teams can learn from how carmakers manage iterations alongside long validation cycles. This fusion of speed and structure offers valuable lessons for scaling Agile in complex environments.

These are just a few of the countless connections that emerge when we look beyond our own industry boundaries—and stay curious about how others solve similar challenges.

 

A Common Language: Value, Risk, and Data

What unites these sectors is a shared shift toward value-focused delivery and data-informed decision-making. Increasingly, project success is no longer measured just by scope-time-budget, but by the impact and value created—for users, customers, and organizations.

This shift demands that PMs become strategic thinkers and translators—able to understand, adopt, and adapt techniques across contexts. Our toolkit isn’t static. It grows with every conversation across the industry fence.

 

Why It Matters for Our Community

In the Belgian region, we are privileged to work within a diverse and dynamic industrial ecosystem. Semiconductors, pharmaceuticals, digital innovation, mobility, energy, aerospace—every domain faces transformation, and project managers are at the center of it all.

This is exactly why the PMI Belgium Chapter is placing a strong emphasis on creating events that foster collaboration across the heterogeneous industry ecosystem not only in Belgium but across the entire BENELUX region. To support this vision, we have established a growing series of initiatives designed to connect professionals across industries, exchange practices, and celebrate excellence. These include:

Already available:

• CoP Life Sciences
• PMI BENELUX SUMMIT 2025, October 10th
• Product Management vs. Project Management: Perspectives from PMs & Bas, October 14th

In our pipeline (stay tuned…):

• Professional days (at enterprise sites)
• PMO BeNeLux Awards
• CoP PMO
• CoP Semiconductor

 

Through these initiatives, we aim to ignite conversations that break silos, inspire new ways of thinking, and equip our members to lead the future of project management with a broader, bolder perspective.

A Final Thought

If innovation is your goal, curiosity must be your method. Look sideways. Borrow freely. Adapt fearlessly.
After all, your next breakthrough might already exist—just not in your industry!

Curious where to start? Join one of our cross-industry communities or attend an upcoming event. Let’s learn from each other—across sectors, across borders.

 

Paolo Alagna
Director of Professional Development, PMI Belgium