The next big crisis might be just around the corner. Are you ready this time?

When survival is threatened by seemingly insurmountable problems, an individual life-form -- or a species -- will either die or become extinct or rise above the limitations of its condition through an evolutionary leap. ― Eckhart Tolle, A New Earth: Awakening to Your Life's Purpose

With the 10th anniversary of the 2008 financial crisis just behind us, the warning cries about another looming one are building up. From widespread high levels of household debt to the looming spectrum of a no-deal Brexit, a slowing Chinese economy and the unsustainably high level of US debt, the list of potential triggers is quite long. 

Today, there are more reasons to believe that the next big economic crisis is going to happen than not. Being prepared can pay off and, in fact, you should embrace the right mindset to capture the opportunities that the looming crisis can bring. So what might those opportunities be? 

If we believe that the next crisis will take a similar shape to the last, we can expect two main factors to be at play: low liquidity and a change in the nature of demand. 

Are you innovating today to fund your success during tough times? 

Today, unless you are a Google, an Apple or an Amazon, it is likely that you are working hard to cope with increasingly disrupted markets. Companies realise that it is an 'innovate or die' imperative, and innovation requires capital, lots of it. But the capital needed to innovate and stay ahead is increasingly scarce. This is because the competitive dynamics at play are increasingly such that the winner takes all: capital, customer, best employees and best ideas. 

A low liquidity crisis is definitively going to aggravate this, pushing the bar for capital access much higher. In times like these, companies who have the money have a phenomenal competitive weapon and the key to secure the capital is to have an attractive pipeline of projects investors can buy into. What does your pipeline of innovation look like? Is it full of cobwebs or great ideas, waiting for a little push to see the light of day? You will want to evaluate your pipeline and, with a bit of foresight, decide to sprint through with new initiatives. If you have a good project, there is always money out there to fund it, but what are you working on right now that will earn you the right to play later? 

Most of all, are you a credible innovator? Having a reputation for innovation will be critical to secure capital during crunch times. So you better start exercising your innovation muscles right now, as you might soon need to prove you can successfully innovate and deal with disruptive forces.

By innovating and bringing to market new products and services, your business not only has something fresh and interesting to offer in the market today, but you will also be more able to attract the much-needed funds to thrive in a crisis tomorrow. 

Are you ready for a fundamental change in demand? 

During the last crisis, we saw the nature of demand change, fast. In effect, businesses struggled when they realised that they had to deal with a new customer base out there - everything they knew about their customers, their needs, attitudes and behaviours became almost irrelevant overnight, as the crisis hit. 

In particular, we saw that demand had become extremely polarised. On one side, wealth broadly insulated the demand at the upper end of the market and this meant that luxury goods thrived were relatively unaffected by the crisis. For example, Burberry did notoriously well after the last financial crisis, reporting strong year-on-year sales growth in the crisis' immediate aftermath. Tiffany and Co., LVHM and others luxury brands also recovered fast from the crisis and kept on growing strongly ever since.

On the other side, discount brands also did well, as consumers adjusted their lifestyle to derive more value, effectively effacing the market in the middle. In this context, those companies who were digitally ready, managed to thrive better than those who weren't. Cost conscious customers are accustomed to shop for bargains online and, undoubtedly, Amazon was one of the main beneficiaries of this strategy.

Today, unless you are able to play the digital game, learn how to use data to quickly respond to market shifts and continue to offer value to customers, you leave yourself exposed. 

With crisis, comes opportunity 

All things are ready, if our mind be so.―  William Shakespeare,  Henry V

The idea that your plan next year should resemble this year's is, at best, naive. if you haven’t got a plan for the looming crisis, then it is likely that you will adopt a defensive mode and then you will be panicking. 

The most important factor for success in a crisis is mindset: a defensive one will kill you, but a mindset ready for change will not only see you through the crisis, it will determine the winners in the new normal. 

Truly, in a time of crisis it’s difficult to sell, but it is also easy to buy things, and this means buying your advertising and your competitors. Many unprepared companies are shocked into cutting costs, advertising budgets and everything else that they think might buy them an extra day to survive. 

However, as your competitors cut budgets, driving down cost of media, the same advertising budget buys you double the share of voice or even more. Your share of voice relative to your market share is a strong predictor of your brand’s growth the following year. Spend above your market size and you will grow.

This is indeed the time to reap the highest return on marketing you can ever expect to generate. You should look forward to a time where market shares are reshuffling and opportunities abounding.