There is no greater influence on invention (or innovation) than necessity, and now, globally most businesses be they sole traders, small family run companies or international conglomerates face a time of necessity. Why is this? If you are reading this at the start of April 2020 the context of this story will not surprise you. The reason for this need to invent is the global coronavirus pandemic. Not since WWII has anything so dramatically changed our working lives. Almost certainly, every single business will have had to ‘get inventive’ either due to governmental regulations around working practice or simply a heavily reduced workforce. Right now necessity is in abundance.
So why do we need a crisis to inspire us to invent? It is probably due to own survival instincts. Normally, when business is stable our working corporate culture contains, to a significant degree, an inherent lack of desire to disrupt the status quo. It is an unfortunate trend that we remain reluctant to act with urgency even when business performance is ‘ok’. The problem is largely that no company really suffered truly dire consequences (ie. bankruptcy, insolvency, takeover, massive headcount reductions etc) when things were ‘ok’. When things are ok, you get by, you cut a cost here, a cost there, reduce international travel but everyone still gets paid. ‘OK’ does not come tagged with a sense of urgency. To understand this in greater detail you will have to wait for a forthcoming post on how you build a culture where ‘ok’ is classified as a crisis.
Why then, when a true crisis erupts, do we invent? It is, as I stated in the previous paragraph, down to our own sense of survival. If a crisis is such that it directly threatens your income (and it is that income that pays for the roof over your head), then you will find that such a sobering reality forces you to invent and invent very very fast. You only have to look at how business all over the world are inventing new ways to survive. Let me give you a few examples. Take what I would call recreational leisure and past-times. My wife is a yoga instructor and has, for the past 20 years, run a highly successful yoga business on the Berks/Oxon borders. She runs day-time and evening classes, a few specialised one-to-ones and some retreats. All her classes are taught face-to-face. It was obvious to her that soon all her venues would close and that social distancing would make ‘normal’ classes impossible. Before I go on, let me explain where necessity fits into this story.
We had already set an objective for her business, last year, that she would deliver some online classes. Well, my wife is also a full-time mum, as well as a sole trader, so perhaps it is no surprise that she finished last year with this objective outstanding. Roll-on two months into 2020 and the threat from coronavirus was imminent. Necessity was there, front and centre, in the starring role and nothing was more important than immediately working out how to move classes on-line. Her business, was already fully-enabled for e-commerce, online payment and automated bookings so the next step was to knit this together with a live-streaming solution. Now, I should tell you that my wife is the least technical person I know - ctrl c for ‘copy’ is still lost on her for example…I can also tell you that within 3 days my wife had invested in a video conferencing business account, resolved all sound and picture quality issues, had effectively communicated to her customer base her new proposition - all accompanied by a fully automated solution that made bookings, took payments and sent emails with joining instructions. Impressive huh? I’d say so. Within a week she had someone join her class from LA International Airport about to join a repatriation flight and someone under lock-down in Hong Kong. Frank Zappa would’ve been proud.
I’ve seen the same ferocious invention in other small businesses, my sons guitar classes now all online, high-end catering companies that are now applying their skills to the elderly and shipping huge volumes of ready made meals, Dyson using their manufacturing to step into producing ventilators for the NHS and the list goes on. On a national scale, look at what the UK has achieved in the face of this crisis. In less than 2 weeks London’s ExCel centre was transformed into a 4000 bed hospital called ‘NHS Nightingale’. It seems like there’s nothing quite like a crisis to help you understand what red-tape and process you need to help you make a good decision… Not much. Nothing helps you to understand what matters most quite like a crisis.
And that is why necessity is the mother of invention. Thanks for the toilet roll Frank.
PS. If you are in need of some yoga to get you and your staff through this period of crisis, feel free to sign up to Beth’s online yoga classes at: https://www.beyoga.co.uk/online-classes/