European governments and health authorities are telling people it’s ok to restart their lives. Both personal and professionally speaking. Yes, we can go back to the office — but maybe not the whole team. Can we use public transports and advice our team to do the same? Yes, but using a mask, disinfecting your hands as much as possible, and keeping the social distance from the other passengers. Can we have coffee in the kitchen as we used to? Can we have lunch together? Can we use the elevator?
There are too many “Yes, but” unfortunately. Uncertainty makes people uncomfortable — no one wants to make decisions without data — but it’s been a few months now, and it seems like the only certain thing in 2020 is the constant uncertainty — therefore, if you want your businesses to thrive we must be ok with that, moreover, you should embrace it.
Some companies realized it sooner and took advantage of a situation that could potentially lead them to bankrupt — instead, they thrived. Media streaming services had the opportunity to grow during the confinement — and Netflix definitely knew how to do it. According to the firm itself, almost 16 million people subscribed the service in the first three months of the year — but if you think that working for Netflix during the pandemic didn’t bring any challenges, you’re wrong. Don’t forget that people sign up for Netflix hoping to find exclusive new content regularly — but with the world stopped and no movie/series being produced, how to keep delivering new content to clients?
Anyway, Netflix was already popular, you might think. Can only big companies benefit from the pandemic? Laithwaite’s Wine, an English wine delivery company says its sales increased by 117% in April when comparing it with last year. The company spokesman explains this growth saying that drinking with friends — even if you’re meeting online — helps people feel as they were together. This statement is supported by Nielson’s study, which concluded that the consumption of alcohol increased during the pandemic.
Another example of a small company thriving is the one launched in 2019 by Krissy Cela — Tone & Sculpt app. With all gyms closed, Krissy offers a platform that allows women to exercise from any location and using material they already have at home. During the month of April, the number of downloads of her app increased by 88%.
Will these businesses succeed when the pandemic is finally over? When bars reopen and people feel confident enough to start going to the gym again? There’s no way to predict that, in the same way, it’s not possible to predict if or when the pandemic will be over, if the second wave of COVID-19 will lock us all at home again or if a totally different disease will disturb our lives in 2021. Or maybe the next health crisis will come when we’re already grandparents. But here’s what we know: all these companies stood up for one reason: they adapted their business models to the current needs of their clients, either to deliver new movies and series when all production was shut, to deliver wine as fast as possible when people were afraid to go to the supermarket or offering ways for people to exercise when they couldn’t use a gym. What do they all have in common? Innovation. So, it doesn’t matter if your company is thriving right now — as the conditions might change fast — or struggling and still trying to recover from the confinement losses. You must keep innovating and adapting your service or product to the needs of your clients.
If you don’t know where to start when it comes to innovation, check our article about 10 types of innovation and how can your company benefit from each of them. We’d also be very happy to introduce you to the innovation processes ourselves. At TAIKAI, we organize open innovation challenges which can be exclusively for your company or open to our enthusiastic tech community with 4000+ developers! Find more information about what we do and the projects we’ve done with several companies here.
