Looking back at history, many of mankind’s most brilliant breakthroughs have happened during the times most plagued by crises. It’s in our very nature. We tend to get more stagnant when in comfort but more resilient and thriving in the face of trouble, or when our survival is on the line.
From the business perspective, Covid jolted many out of their comfort zone to the verge of extinction. Many businesses were forced to look for new ways of doing things, either to reconfigure a part of their operations that had been impacted by the pandemic or pivot entirely into new areas to survive. Of course, not all have been successful. Many small businesses that were already on the razor-thin margins of the economy simply couldn’t find a way out and were forced to shut down.
The success in adaptation, however, has been most seen in the digital technology sector, where it’s most possible to bridge the gaps created by the disease. Tech-celeration, as they call it, has been the result of the tech industry’s vigorous push in innovation and the rapid adoption of new technologies among the masses as a response to Covid.
Educational Technology
Education was arguably one of the sectors that were shocked the most. The unprecedented disruption caused by the pandemic kept hundreds of millions of students out of schools and universities all around the world and cost months of learning gains. For a change-averse industry that had been clinging onto centuries-old practices and procedures, this was the catalyst that finally pushed it towards innovation and newer ways of teaching and learning.
All bodies and parties involved were forced to come up with quick and timely solutions or suffer the profound and lasting effects of the educational disruption. The upheaval was so major that at first, EdTech was not able to respond in time. As a result, the first solution was to keep the framework as intact as possible by transferring the same instructor and lecture-based training from the physical class to the online space using communications technology already in place.
However, limitations of this approach started to show soon after its adoption. The need for a sense of community and meaningful peer interaction lacking in online classrooms ushered in a myriad of startups with innovative solutions that could revolutionize the education industry. While “Zoom University” is still the predominant form of remote learning across the board, the change in educational institutions in utilizing new methods has heralded a massive and lasting transformation of learning in the future. The market size for digital and e-learning is predicted to quadruple by 2026. This growth in the market will provide a fertile environment in which many revolutionary educational ideas will emerge.
The Retail World
The retail industry has been at the epicenter of this crisis. Shopping centers and brick-and-mortar businesses have experienced temporary closures on multiple occasions during the course of the last two years. Yet, the industry has shown an abundance of resilience, to a large extent due to its familiarity with shifts in consumer behavior and the technological infrastructure it had built for over two decades. Services and measures such as click and collect, curbside pickups, and contactless checkout were already in use—however small in proportion—but the pandemic increased the adoption speed to an unprecedented level.
This, however, doesn’t mean that the crisis has not fostered new ideas in other aspects of the industry. Since predictions suggest that shopping centers and stores are not going anywhere, and many customers will still crave the retail experience regardless, some facets of the sector have been and continue to be reimagined and updated.
For instance, the convergence of physical shopping and digital technology has manifested in various forms of innovation, such as touchless vending machines, which utilize AI-powered cloud management systems, online and contactless payment methods, UV sanitization technology, biometric authorization, and augmented reality to eliminate any health concern for the consumers.
The pandemic has also considerably accelerated the trends that were happening before but at a very slow pace. Retail giants are heavily investing in drone delivery services as the adoption is soaring swiftly among companies and consumers. Many believe that these changes permanently shape the future both in terms of consumer shopping habits and behavior, and the ways by which retail businesses deliver services and products.
In conclusion, the sudden change in direction and its subsequent uncertainty has enhanced the intrinsic human ingenuity, yet it remains to be seen what innovation approaches will pass the test of time. There is always the likelihood that we will witness a return to older behavioral patterns and ways of doing things, but the more efficient practices and innovations that yield better results are most likely to stay and shape the new normal.