Pandemic Generosity

There’s a Chinese proverb that says spilled water cannot be gathered back up. After being flooded with containment messages #StayTheFuckHome #WashYourHands #FlattenTheCurve, and after several days of preventive lockdown, I want to reflect on whether we’ll be able to alter our routine once we return to normality, or whether we’ll come back enriched with lessons learned from this forced retreat.

[This article has been previously published in ENGLISH under the title “Pandemic Generosity and Digital Transformation” at https://www.ie.edu/business-school/news-and-events/whats-going-on/pandemic-generosity-digital-transformation/ 18-03-2020]

These past few days we’ve discovered the generosity of companies like Microsoft, giving away Ms Teams licenses [1] to educational institutions, the advances of Alphabet’s subsidiary, Verily [2], offering diagnostic tests in the state of California, and even Facebook’s own CEO [3] offering free advertising to the WHO on his social network. These are the most valuable companies on the planet, and every gesture counts in these periods of heightened emotional exposure.

The reflection left to us after this unfinished crisis is whether less technological companies will have learned something about what it takes to mitigate a crisis, one that today no longer takes the megalomaniacal shape of an armed conflict, but rather the tiny form of a microorganism that closes borders, hinders the flow of goods and suffocates retail trade. Perhaps we’ll now redirect the focus of digital transformation toward pandemic mitigation, and I believe there’s a gray area halfway between the two.

Whenever we’ve talked about digital transformation, we seemed to take it for granted that digital technologies were the ones disrupting markets. That the use of data and technology was the key to growing exponentially in a digital economy that no longer respects the size, nor the age, of large corporations. And we must also remember that it’s the professionals within these large corporations who add a valuable space for differentiation: Strategy, organizational methodologies and collaborative skills.

“it’s the professionals within these large corporations who add a valuable space for differentiation: Strategy, organizational methodologies and collaborative skills.”

We can interpret the gestures from Facebook, Google and Microsoft as opportunistic generosity, and the truth is that traditional companies have the same window of opportunity. Perhaps their excessive exposure to a single industry makes them more vulnerable in terms of revenue generation compared with these large tech conglomerates.

TOWARD A ROADMAP

Even though big tech companies lost more than $320 billion last Monday, March 9 [4], we all know that their recovery in value will possibly be far greater than that of traditional companies after this period. Some of the following questions might perhaps serve as a script for a possible post-COVID-19 roadmap:

• Is it possible that the lesson learned comes from reinterpreting strategy when it comes to generating new business models? (Alphabet’s Verily)
• Have we prepared our distribution models for a worldwide quarantine across the rest of traditional companies? (Amazon’s Whole Foods)
• To what extent are our ways of working in traditional companies, our organizational methodologies, ready for an abrupt shift to a 100% remote work environment? Do we have the tools and the mindset needed to manage off-site teams over extended periods of time? (Microsoft Teams, Slack)
• Can we compete with tech giants that decide to react in a decidedly generous way —even while losing more than 320 billion dollars in a single day— in moments of global crisis?
• How can we anticipate the detection of similar scenarios, or soften similar moments through our collaboration by making use of data? [5]

My final reflection is how we can translate digital transformation into a space closer to sustainability. [#DigitalSustainability] In my view, the reflection should be whether our business models, organizational models, technology stack and data strategy allow us to face a crisis like the current one, should it happen again within this same year.

Sources:

1. Linkedin. Post by Country General Manager of Microsoft Spain offering Ms Teams free Licence | https://www.linkedin.com/posts/pilopez_microsoftteams-office365-teams-activity-6643230471927013376-iDlw Last visit on March 16, 2020.
2. Verily. Project Baseline: “California COVID-19 risk screening and testing” https://www.projectbaseline.com/study/covid-19/ .Last visit on March 16, 2020.
3. Facebook. Post by CEO Mark Zuckerberg offering free ads to WHO https://www.facebook.com/4/posts/10111615249124441/?d=n Last visit on March 16, 2020.
4. CNBC: “Tech’s big five lost over $320 billion of value in Monday’s market crash; Apple plunged 7.9%” https://www.cnbc.com/2020/03/09/big-tech-lost-over-320-billion-of-value-in-mondays-market-crash.html Last visit on March 16, 2020.
5. support.google.com, “best way to summarize Johns Hopkins coronavirus data – pivot table or query?” https://support.google.com/docs/thread/33032242?hl=en Last visit on March 16, 2020.

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