Six Pandemic Trends That Will Stick
And what you should do about them.
by Chelsea Lamb
Anthropologist Ralph Linton said that the last thing a fish would notice would be the water. We all know the pandemic has changed the business water we swim in, but how?
Here are six changes in the water that should stick post-pandemic and how you can adjust your thinking to capitalize on them.
VR/AR/XR in mainstream business functions. During the pandemic, online e-commerce sites skyrocketed from 16 billion to 20 billion visits a month in 2020. Along with that growth comes changing expectations. Shoppers expect to try on clothes virtually, experience art on their virtual living room wall, or see how a pair of sunglasses fit.
What to do. Explore how virtual reality, augmented reality, and mixed reality (combining real and virtual reality) can augment your business in ways you haven’t yet imagined. Read A Manager's Guide to Augmented Reality from Harvard Business Review.
Systemic Zoomification. Congratulations, you figured out how to use Zoom for meetings. But have you incorporated a new style of collaboration in every facet of your business? Reimagine digital interaction everywhere. For example, in-person training won’t go away, but dynamic, cohort-style learning is better in many ways. Webinars and bylines articles are so 2018; LinkedIn Live, snackable content, and social interaction are the new norm. And as for your salespeople: do they really know how to sell remotely? It’s more than just starting a zoom meeting.
What to do. Read Four Tips for Virtual Collaboration by Elizabeth Grace Saunders to start noticing how the collaboration waters have changed.
Cohort meeting mentality. Our first virtual customer wasn't great. Four events later, they’re better and getting still improving. Analysts expect virtual meetings, virtual education, and telemedicine to surpass in-person options by 2025. Great virtual events are radically different from in-person events, and you have to relearn how to approach them.
What to do. Attend a great cohort-style course! The best learning is doing. My favorites are Building a Second Brain by Forte Labs, Seth Godin's AltMBA, and Write of Passage by David Perell. And read The Rise of Cohort Based Courses by Tiago Forte, which explains how old-school meetings and education are changing.
Vulnerability culpability. Think your home security system makes you safer? You’re right. But did you know that only 13% of consumer IoT products have a public vulnerability policy? That means the systems themselves may be vulnerable to attacks. Vulnerability awareness, policy, and action are just beginning to be a c-level concern. And a policy is just the beginning--how you respond to issues is the hard part. Yet 87% of companies are still stuck in neutral.
What to do. Read The IoT Security Foundation report that profiles vulnerabilities and what to them.
Digital business legal hurdles. Are you bemused by the legal wrangling over Telsa and the rise of driverless vehicles? Not so fast—as your business uses more robots, drones, and AI, these driverless business applications will present new legal issues of your own.
What to do. If you don't have one, plan to hire a Chief Security Officer (CSO) to focus on the unique legal questions posed by digital business and automated interactions.
Driverless business applications. Real-time data is growing 50 times faster than traditional business data. This isn’t new news. But the automation that can come as a result is still unnoticed by many companies. Look for the continued slow and steady rise in driverless business applications from chatbots, automated business processes, and AI-driven, self-service applications.
What to do. Get inspired by driverless application case studies and learn about streaming, IoT, and automation technologies that help make it easy.
The post-pandemic business water is fun to swim in and full of opportunities. Virtual reality, Zoomification, cohort-style interaction, driverless business, and their legal and security ramifications will never be the same, and neither can the way you think about them.
