There is no doubt that 2021 will be one of the strangest years in history. It combines globalization with multiple crisis: health, economic, and climate. In this situation we are confronted with two options: do nothing or innovate.
Here are the top innovations goals companies should try to reach in 2021:
Health
Beating Covid 19 will remain a high priority goal. There is a lot of room for improvement in prevention, while treatment development just started.
Poverty
While upper class might get richer, middle and especially lower class will suffer. The wealth and growth decrease will set the world population and economies at least a decade back. Such poverty crisis will result in elevated crime, lower labor bargaining power, lower quality and quantity of production. Most importantly purchasing power will be reduced.
Work from home
Even if the pandemic ends, majority of the staff will want to continue working from home. This will affect management, travel, real estate, and many other industries.
Human resources
Health, work from home, poverty, and other factors will disrupt availability of the work force, recruitment, outsourcing, contracting.
Digitalization
Digital tools are a standard. However, many companies adopted digitalization superficially, without any real deep change. Digitalization is a very destructive disruption which will lower the number of competitors in next few years.
Sustainability
Already in 2020 multimillion EUR contracts are rejected simply because suppliers are not sustainable. In 2021 companies not investing in offering sustainable products and operating in a sustainable manner will be more and more isolated and ignored.
Companies in 2021 will be faced with impossible challenges to invest in innovations while their revenues diminish. Companies should now start to talk to each other, build partnerships, share costs, listen to customers, be open and supportive. We have a hard year ahead of us, and an open attitude is a good way to start.
| previous | next |
