Around 5 months ago, I wrote that the State of Corporate Innovation was still more focused on “Corporate Innovation Theater” rather than doing “Impactful Innovation”. Unfortunately, only few corporates launched some impactful initiatives, focusing on solving major pain points (not generic challenges) in the market to generate win-win-win situations.

With Covid-19, everything seemed to have changed now. A significant shift towards digital transformation has been conducted in a matter of days and weeks, working from home instead from office. The main driver of this successful transformation was not the CEO, CTO, CIO, etc. but rather an invisible virus called Covid-19. This shows that corporates and government entities can actually embrace innovation in no-time if there is a painful reason. Even though this is a good start, we need to embrace innovation not based on fear but rather based on proactively improving how we develop/produce our products/services, how we market our products/services and how we engage our stakeholders (shareholders, customers, employees, etc.).

The key question right now for most (if not all) corporates and government entities is how to get rid of the “Corporate Covid-19 Fever” by developing Post-Covid-19 strategies and business models. Unfortunately, most of them might go back to traditional tools/playbook, traditional management methods and traditional consultants to help them during this crisis, mainly focusing on cost-cutting, cost-cutting and cost-cutting. This approach, however, might have worked in the past but are no-way a guarantee for success in the current situation; they actually could be toxic in this new environment. While they were relevant in the past (such as the 2008 economy crisis), the situation today is significantly different as this shutdown has and will continue to have significant systematical impact across everything and anything. It will change how and what we buy, how and what we produce/offer, how we transact with each other, etc. In short, everything is on the table to be changed.

In order to get rid of the current “Corporate Covid-19 Fever”, corporates and government entities need to become resilient entities that are constantly reinventing how they do business in order to constantly push their boundaries, meaning “Resilient Corporate Innovation”.

We are currently working with some amazing corporates and government entities to develop Post-Covid-19 strategies and business models. Here are some lessons learned so far to “increase the immune system” for corporates and government entities:

–       understand and accept that we won’t be going back to the “pre-Covid-19” situation

–       reset your mindset about the future because the world will be changing faster than ever before, meaning embrace a culture of continuous innovation and invention

–       adjust your value propositions/offerings

–       develop different, impactful and agile business models

–       develop resilient workforce and leadership team 

–       etc.

What are your lessons learned so far?