The future is fluid. Each act, each decision, and each development creates new possibilities and eliminates others. The future is ours to direct.
Many of us, leaders of large and small businesses, are asking ourselves the same question: How will COVID-19 impact my survival? Few of us anticipated what is happening and the anxiety that has come with it. We all wonder what these times mean for our businesses.
Despite the anxiety surrounding today’s climate, uncertainty can be an opportunity for innovation.
Understanding Ourselves
The first step to experiencing opportunities that today brings is to understand ourselves. Reflect on what brings us a sense of fulfillment—the aspiration we all seek. Then, we can shift our mindset and be ready to explore other possibilities. We can begin to understand what fulfillment in the world of the future means to our customers and their customers as we share outlooks, needs, and emotions. Those insights are the seeds of business reinvention.
To map your way into the future, start with yourself. Collect inputs from your human senses to test unchartered directions. Look around; be open to seeing the world from different perspectives. Touch your customers in a way that is consistent with your brand. Speak to them and, more importantly, listen to what’s said, as well as what’s left unsaid. You can help them learn to embrace the unchartered territory of post-COVID operations. Find ways to get a taste of what it means to invent the future with your customers.
A Future Ripe for Innovation
Invention demands creativity. Creativity demands reassembling reality and, when necessary, innovating to create a new reality. The future is ripe for innovation.
At Breakthrough, we have been thinking about some hypothetical future states that can be springboards into the future. The energy of these springboards is released by customer insights and innovative thinking. Envision opportunities and what it would take to participate in a future where one or more of these hypotheses are the reality:
- Government will provide support to businesses to increase sourcing of domestic raw materials, products, and services.
- A new set of products and services will be developed to support buyers demanding suppliers guarantee supply continuity.
- Value chains will be modified to reduce supply disruptions and inefficiencies.
- Teaming and collaboration will be redefined to assure operational continuity, efficiency, and acceleration of new product commercialization.
- "Made in USA" will be a strong promotional factor.
- Design will be more human-centered.
- Mobile robotics and drones will continue to be easier to use at lower costs and demand for them to grow rapidly.
- Wearable sensors will expand in consumer markets.
We invite you to consider development or adaptation of products and services that address possible future states having the greatest impact on your success.
Share what you think about the future. Leave a comment below.
