COVID 19 – A Catalyst for the Next Wave of Innovation

The phenomenon, such as pandemics and economic recessions, change the track of businesses, economies, and on a larger scale of government’s decisions thus change the course of history.

SARS Pandemic 2002-2004 similar to COVID-19

Talking about recent times, the pandemic of SARS of 2002-2004 brought about a spectacular growth of a then- not so big e-commerce company titled Ali Baba and aided in establishing it at the top of retail in Asia. This growth was made even larger by underlying eagerness around human contact and traveling, very close to the current situation of Covid-19.

Impact of Pandemic on Businesses

With the corona pandemic, we are already witnessing initial symptoms of a shift in how businesses and consumers behave. The remote working concept is being adopted by non-tech and tech companies identically. Supply chains are being disrupted all-around and retail reserves are running short of ibuprofen, toilet paper, and dry goods altogether.

Few changes are direct, a temporary rejoinder to the crises, and are expected to revert to structured levels once coronavirus is contained. Nevertheless, some of these changes will continue, generating a prolonged digital disruption that will shape the businesses for decades.

Innovative Approach of Business

The trick to pulling through any unforeseen disruptive incident in the market – major or minor – is to have the potential to discover innovation in the middle of a crisis. This pandemic has brought forth unexpected and new innovations that modify and remold the world. 

Three Dimensional Pandemic Impact

Pandemics are ought to directly have an impact on psychological, biological, and economic dimensions. Its concentration differs and is determined by the mortality and morbidity rate of the infectious microorganism at hand, in addition to the time it consumes to spread. 

Four Macro Innovations in Small Business

Keeping in mind these learnings, below is a list of four macro innovations we are expecting to stick all over post-Covid-19. 

1. Supply chains will blend in resilient ecosystems and become reliable

Universal supply chains have always been harnessed towards maintaining relatively constant quality while driving baser costs at each step. As a result, there has been notable concentration risk to vendors and geographies for most organizations. For instance, China has been scaling down because of Covid-19, and producing a knock-on supply effect we are witnessing today has revealed the deficiency of flexibility in this approach.

Thus, there is an intense requirement for a more coordinated, trackable, and distributed supply of products across several vendors and geographies while carrying on with economies of scale.

Now, this would need global platforms to be uplifted that make use of sophisticated technologies like robotics, 5G, blockchain, and IoT to help connect numerous buyers with numerous vendors all over a ‘mesh’ of supply chains.

The normal B2B platform suspects like Ali Baba and Amazon are probable to intensify and compete in the decades to come for the possession of this supply chain ecosystem that is more sophisticated. 

2. Heath Care will become Digital

It is quite easy to foretell that the Covid-19 will be a catalyst for online education and remote working. What is more difficult to decipher is what will happen once a bulk of the professionals need to function jointly remotely.

Probably this change will affect the mental health, morale, and productivity of workers across the globe, and businesses are required to prepare for it. For companies that are looking to give their workplace a human touch digitally, the options are restricted today — with Humu is a startup by Laszlo Bock (ex-google HR chief) standing in pole position.

For individuals functioning remotely, things are seeming to be much better. Some mental health startups like Moment Pebble and Braive can double down on working out on the issue of isolation whereas business networking applications like Ripple can aid in finding a solution for the mentoring and development challenges which follow you if you are a remote worker. 

3. Heading towards Digital Bureaucracies

The coronavirus pandemic has made government bureaucracies take action faster than ever before. For instance, China broke records after building a 645,000 sq. ft hospital in only 10 days in Wuhan.

Such efforts, along with the transparency of biological effect, could have been upgraded if there existed a greater number of smart cities globally. As per the latest study by the University of Glasgow, at most 27 out of 5,500 large-sized cities re regarded chief in this area.

Now, as governments gain an understanding from this Covid-19 experience, there will be a shift in investment, which will be in favor of smart cities because it would be important to keep them to tackle the next pandemic like an event in a better way.

4. Moving towards Freelancing

Even though the freelance service section has been gravely hit in the private section, there still exists a great opportunity for freelancers in the public section if the required help is initiated by governments.

With public and governmental offices flooded with requests and information, workers would be overwhelmed and immediate response to all the issues would be challenging.

Thus, it is recommended that governments may use currently surviving platforms for freelancers and make use of these self-employed workers to lessen the burden of work. This could be advantageous to the government and would also give an opportunity to the self- employed workers.

Synopsis

A post-coronavirus world: Covid-19 is a horrible shock for the economy as well as for the thousands and lakhs of individuals affected by it. Firms need to make sure that the safety and health of their employees, suppliers, and partners come first.

Talking about things in the longer term, Covid-19 has irreversibly altered the way businesses will be competing in the coming decade. Companies that opt to capitalize on these basic shifts will succeed and those that don’t will remain unsettled. Do not miss your opportunity to make the most of this time, and make sure to work hard to innovate. You never know what could come next!

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