Keep innovating, even after the coronavirus pandemic ends
The six businesses featured in WBJ Staff Writer Monica Busch’s feature “Instagram stories” aren’t generating near the revenues they were prior to the coronavirus pandemic, but they’ve managed to hang on during the current shutdown. Their secret sauce appears to be the community of followers they’ve carefully curated over several years. As Busch's story points out, each of them has cracked the not-so-mysterious code for building a social media following on Instagram, meaning they have a core group of tech-savvy customers who are better able to navigate the difficulties of social distancing.
Not every business is so fortunate. At a time when many of the most astute businesses are being forced to limp along at survivability levels, those who have already laid a digital foundation have a clear head start. Shortly after it closed its dining room, Worcester bakery The Queen’s Cups launched online ordering, and now the shop is shipping cupcakes to customers as far away as Florida. BirchTree Bread Co. has used its social media feeds to keep customers appraised of available menu items and communicate its temporary closure and reopening.
Leveraging technology to get the job done has been critical to many organizations. Two months ago remote working was not widespread in our region, being offered by most firms only in limited situations.
Today, it has become a necessity for the majority of employers. Those companies who already had the technology backbone and some training around the tools in place were more likely to ensure a smooth transition to the new normal. For others, the shift has been more disruptive, but still necessary.
While nearly every organization is innovating out of necessity right now, it will be important to maintain that new muscle even when conditions return to a resemblance of what they were a couple months ago. Companies doing what they’ve always done and applying old fixes to new problems won’t thrive in the fast-changing world we’re in. This pandemic has moved the pace of change to light speed, and companies that can’t keep up with that pace are unlikely to come out winners on the other side of this crisis.
This thinking applies to all organizations in the for-profit and nonprofit world. While the financial strain may not be evenly distributed, most will need to respond to the pinch.
In a highly visible example of thinking outside of the box and responding with rapid speed, two disparate efforts launched by the United Way of Central Massachusetts and the Greater Worcester Community Foundation were overnight merged into a collaborative effort: the Worcester Together Fund.
That collaboration has had the 1+1=3 effect, raising more than $6 million in about a month, $1 million of which has already been distributed. This was followed by the creation of the Massachusetts COVID-19 Relief Fund launched by first lady Lauren Baker and the One8 Foundation in Boston, which is raising and dispersing much needed funds to local nonprofits. These quick actions from leading nonprofits have already made a significant impact on Greater Worcester community’s ability to help those most in need, a collaboration unlikely to have been birthed without the current crisis.
The need to embrace change and innovate is nothing new. Yet, sometimes it takes a crisis to remind us all of the importance of not being complacent.
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