The concept of innovation requires a compelling force. The need to send long-distance messages called for the invention of the telephone.
Changes in circumstances led to the transitions witnessed from the first to the fourth industrial revolution.
Since 2020, the same necessity caused by Covid-19 has led to innovative disruptions.
As many organizations have experienced difficulty last year in adjusting to the realities of the pandemic, some have in one way or the other designed new innovations that are changing the narrative.
On average most startups that have designed innovation during the pandemic have tailored them to solve challenges around the effect of the pandemic.
Moving forward, what can we say about the future of innovation in a post-Covid-19 era?
HR will be the new spotlight
At the full heat of the COVID-19 pandemic, many organizations asked their workers to leave for home.
Following this development, many business leaders saw increased cases of burnout and improper handling of highly sensitive data among their team members.
Fortunately, these observed challenges have pointed out why innovation has to be directed to the HR departments.
It is just left for organizations to deal with these fundamental questions of ways to keep their team safe when they probably return to their physical offices.
They will need to find ways to increase the momentum that has been established in getting adapted to a change in environment.
The role of technology can’t be underestimated in this as almost all organizations have adopted video conferencing and effective project management tools.
With more advanced technology tools like artificial intelligence and blockchain, gaps in workers’ performance can easily be identified.
Resilience will be vital
Before the advent of the Covid-19 pandemic, innovative projects were mostly directed at not just increasing profits but to also fend off competitions.
However, many organizations these days seem to have redirected their target towards resilience.
In this time especially after coming out from a pandemic ridden 2020, innovation will be significant for an organization’s resilience.
Moving forward, companies would need to make a rapid shift in responding to unexpected events especially how to deal with customer needs.
Business leaders would need to create processes that are much flexible to deal with changes in the future of work.
Best will win over First
We can’t doubt the advantage of being the first in pioneering creative innovation.
E-commerce platform, Amazon definietly has dominated the online bookstore for so long as been the pioneering platform.
However, with the Covid-19 crises, priorities are likely to change as users will prefer quality of service to speed.
For instance, when the Covid-19 hit, food restaurants had to change their operation of service.
In this case, it was no longer by innovation, as customers had to opt for food companies that offered the best roadside or home delivery service.
In this case, it wasn’t about who did it first, but who did it best.
In conclusion, the issue is not that organizations can’t change, but they however rarely plan for it.
Right from the onset, business leaders have most of the time taken a narrow view about innovation, however, the advent of Covid-19 is giving them new views about the concept of innovation.
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