Innovation in a time of crisis

COVID-19 pandemic has created a lot of challenges for businesses. The effect has been tremendous and certain industries like retail, airline and hospitality have been hit the hardest. However, it is in such time of crisis and disruptions that we see an acceleration of innovation and creativity as businesses and people try to adapt and survive.

Human beings are resilient. While some may have difficulties to stay strong during a crisis, majority of us would face the challenges head on and fight. This survival instinct in our DNA has probably been a key reason that we as a human race outperformed all others and have emerged as the dominant species on Earth.

History has shown that during major world-wide crisis such as the World Wars that we saw explosions of technology development in a short span of time. Engineers had achieved unthinkable technology breakthroughs, and the speed of moving from the drawing board to production and deployment had been unprecedented. Such technologies, for example jet engines, sonar and synthetic rubber, had later been transferred to the commercial and consumer markets which had propelled major paradigm shifts in industry development and lifestyle.

Today, unlike the World Wars, we are fighting a common invisible enemy. With scientists and engineers armed with computing power millions, if not billions of times more powerful than Alan Turing’s computer, and with our advancement in AI, bio-science and knowledge in medicine, I believe COVID-19 will provide us the greatest push and acceleration of technology development in the century.

In terms of digitalisation, we are already observing remarkable speed in the adoption of remote collaboration tools and automation. This pandemic has demolished any form of excuses and inertias that SMEs, corporates and education institutes had used to procrastinate the adoption of ready tools for digitalisation, telecommuting and remote learning. We are also seeing the vaccine trials being rolled out quickly, compressing what once might take years into months.

However, inventions, innovations and creativity do not need to be the privilege reserved only for technologists and scientists only.

We are familiar with how Hedy Lamarr, one of the best known actresses of mid-20th century, and her composer friend had developed the frequency hopping spread spectrum based on musical concept that went on to revolutionized weapons systems, and helped create cell phones today.

In my opinion, if we take a personal commitment and interest in contributing to overcome challenges, for work or for the society, we will be highly likely able to come out with ingenious ways of solving problems.

Even at the marketing and customer engagement front, hotels can get rather innovative in maintaining their link with their clients during time of major travel disruption like this.

I have received a mailer from Hyatt today and I was impressed with their ingenuity. Being isolated does not mean out of touch. While they are not in the business of creating technology, Hyatt has cleverly ride on the wave of tech adoption by providing their beautifully taken sceneries of their resorts for use as video conferencing backgrounds and wallpaper. They also top this up by making their signature drinks recipe available for one to mix at home so that one can enjoy the cocktail through a “Bring Hyatt Home” and “Beverage and Background parings" campaign . Hyatt has kept itself relevant and stay fresh in the mind of their loyal customers, as well as leveraging their customers’ network who might get to see the beautiful virtual backgrounds through their video conferences which may then lead to conversations about Hyatt.

COVID-19 is not the first crisis human face and it will not be the last. There will always be “new norms” and there will be regular disruption and continuous evolution of technologically enabled lifestyle in both work and personal life. To survive in a flowing stream of change, we can either try hard to swim against it or swim with it. The most important thing is for us to keep an open mind, continue our quest to learn and innovate as much as possible so that we can raft through the dangerous rapids and enter the great blue ocean.

Links in the articles:

1. https://www.warhistoryonline.com/instant-articles/inventions-and-innovations-wwii.html
2. https://www.cnbc.com/video/2020/04/06/coronavirus-vaccine-is-being-developed-at-unprecedented-speed-expert.html
3. https://blogs.scientificamerican.com/guest-blog/how-alan-turing-invented-the-computer-age/
4. https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/hedy-lamarr-not-just-a-pr/
5. https://world.hyatt.com/content/gp/en/landing/hyatt-virtual-getaways.html?src=wohesum_email_ESUMM0520_ENG_20200527_BringHyattHome_AC000000165000000335A000007080ENG_G%2D546494515N_NTc5ODA5NzgxMgS2