You don’t even have to try, because you’re doing it right now. All the predictions you’ve made, all the prognostications you’ve been reading about in your industry for years: they’ve all just moved up. Assume that what was going to be ten years out, is happening this year. Happening now.
Despite how it feels, time isn’t frozen under quarantine – at least as it relates to your business, it’s vastly sped up. Why? Well, as the old proverb goes, “necessity is the mother of invention.”
Figure out now how this will affect your business.
Your competitors are innovating right now – because they have to in order to stay in business.
“Necessity is the mother of invention”
I find the innovation happening in B2C right now to be amazingly compelling. What ideas are sparked for your B2B offering?
- Hair colorists are custom mixing blends, dropping them off at customers’ door steps, and then conducting training sessions via Zoom.
- Drizly is in the right place at the right time. The home alcohol delivery service has increased revenue of 1,600% in the crisis. Most businesses would love a 1,600% increase over 10 years, not to mention one month.
- Club Vino has created shipped-to-you home wine tasting events where the head sommelier walks you through the experience via video.
- The Guerrilla Tacos food truck in LA sells Emergency Taco Kits – enough makings for 60 tacos, plus a roll of toilet paper thrown in. Everything you need to survive the crisis!
- Spiffy, the on-demand car cleaning company, pivoted to sanitize business facilities.
- In China, cosmetics company Lin Qingxuan turned their in-store beauty consultants into online influencers, increasing sales 200% year-over-year.
The New Normal
There isn’t any going back. The irony is that the new normal will actually be the same as the old, just 10 years into the future. This was all already coming, but the crisis has sped up our timeline.
Large companies have always struggled to be innovative for a very simple reason: they don’t have to be. It’s the pressure cooker of limited resources that drives innovation. This is your core advantage in this crisis.
Be innovative, because you have to.
All the best,
Bill Bice
CEO
