Mahi Sall, Advisor, Fintech-Bank Partnerships, Payments and Financial Inclusivity
January 25th, 2023
Mahi Sall is the CEO & Founder of FinXpair, a Berlin-based strategic advisory boutique firm focu[...]
How Will Things Be Different When It’s All Over?
BCG Henderson Institute | Martin Reeves, Lars Faeste, Kevin Whitaker, and Mark Abraham | March 15, 2020
A rebound of demand is inevitable, and using high-frequency data proxies for the movement of goods and people, production and confidence, we can see that it is already beginning to happen in China. (See Exhibit 2.) Given the complexity of rebooting companies and supply chains at different speeds in different places, the time to begin preparing a rebound strategy is now.
Over the past 100 years, epidemics have only temporarily deflected the economic cycle with short, sharp shocks. Of course, this time could be different. A bear market (technically a 20% decline) does not guarantee a recession but indicates a high probability of one.
Prudent companies will prepare for this possibility. Our analysis shows that 14% of companies across all sectors actually grow top and bottom lines during recessions and downturns. Those who flourish share the common traits of preparation, preemption, growth orientation and long term transformation. They take a long term view and place growth bets when competitors are retrenching.
And even after the epidemic recedes, and even in the case of recession, there will be opportunities and needs to reimagine business and operating models and also the portfolio of offerings.
In anticipating this new post-crisis world and seizing opportunity in adversity, we need to think consider several shaping forces: new learnings, new attitudes, new habits and new needs.
See: Podcast: Stronger for longer: How top performers thrive through downturns
A crisis is like a receding tide — it reveals the rocks beneath the surface that were there all along. While some organizations will likely resume operations after the crisis without looking back, others will be carefully examining lessons learned and regarding them as opportunities to improve their organizational effectiveness. They will find opportunities to improve foresight, agility and resilience through improvements in market intelligence, risk assessment, scenario planning, crisis management, communications, remote working, workforce redeployment, supply chain resilience, cross company collaboration, IT infrastructure and many other areas. And each of these will in turn generate opportunities for the suppliers of software, hardware and services to enable these enhanced capabilities.
The crisis will also shift consumer attitudes, creating elevated awareness of altered beliefs about personal and environmental hygiene, health, social relations, travel and crisis preparedness. This is already driving up demand for sanitizers, antibacterial cleaning products, healthcare advice, healthcare insurance, disaster preparation products, O2O (online to offline) delivery and other many other categories.
Some new behaviors forced by the crisis will likely stick as new habits after the epidemic has receded. These may include remote working and home shopping, which will drive opportunities for connectivity, distance learning, video conferencing, home office equipment, e-commerce, delivery services and the like. Corporations and employees too may see opportunities to reduce travel and physical colocation on an ongoing basis, having been forced to master the art of effective remote collaboration.
See:
Fintechs getting a boost from coronavirus outbreak
Volunteers produce 3D-printed valves for life-saving coronavirus treatments
And some unmet needs will be revealed, which can become targets for innovation. Already we see Chinese companies, who have had more time to adapt to the crisis, creating new types of health insurance, and new types of online to offline business models. We will likely see innovations sprouting in home shopping, collaboration, health information, health and hygiene products and cleaning products, and hygiene benefits being created for all manner of services and products.
How can companies grow into and shape these emerging opportunities? We suggest 6 key success factors:
1. An “opportunity in adversity” mindset
Macroeconomics is not fate. Economics deals with aggregates and averages, whereas strategy is about creating deviations from these averages. Companies which will flourish during and beyond the crisis believe in and seek out advantage in adversity. And the evidence is that such opportunities exist in every sector.
2. Looking ahead
While the average company will likely be focused on the crisis itself, some are looking ahead at the inevitable rebound in demand, at the possibility of recession and at the opportunities to innovate and rethink their business models. They are prepared for different scenarios, but are actively shaping their own fate.
3. Picking up weak signals
Many companies, experiencing a shock to demand and chaos in their supply chains will be mainly preoccupied with managing immediate challenges. Those who look at at a more granular level, will see that the demand for some categories is increasing, that customers are asking for things that are not currently available or that companies in their own or other sectors are innovating how they do business. In fact, within your own organization, there are likely multiple groups which are departing from standard procedures in order to manage new circumstances. Learning organizations are asking, what those innovations are and how they can be codified and amplified. Picking up weak signals means first and foremost, having access to signals, through access to high frequency (daily), granular data on shifting patterns of beliefs, behaviors and demand and by listening very closely to customers.
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