EarlyBirds is offering its strategic innovation capabilities for businesses operating in industries most affected by the coronavirus pandemic of 2020 and those who have experienced radical growth and disruption in 2021.

Though the first vaccines for coronavirus were administered at the end of 2020, it still impacted life all over the world throughout most of 2021 as newer strains of the virus were discovered and vaccination rates failed to keep up with expectations. A lot of industries that were hoping for a complete revival in 2021 were left to wait as the general population was cautious in the adoption of their pre-pandemic lifestyle. This problem was compounded by a major section of the workforce re-evaluating their priorities in life and choosing not to go back to work to jobs that posed a high risk of being exposed to coronavirus and did not compensate them adequately for the risk.

According to some statistics, after the pandemic, 88% of organizations encouraged their employees to work from home. This reduced population mobility, severely affecting the industries that relied on them the most. The leisure, hospitality, and tourism industries were also severely hit as travellers chose to stay at home to not risk exposure to the coronavirus. 4 in 10 of all jobs lost in the United States following the pandemic were in the leisure and hospitality business. The retail industry was also particularly hit as people found themselves with a lack of disposable income following job loss. China reported a plateauing of manufacturing output in 2019 and 2020 as it was the epicentre of the pandemic. The worldwide logistics industry also followed suit as global supply chains were disrupted.

However, the pandemic didn’t spell all doom and gloom for each sector of the economy. Some industries that saw an uptick in the last year include the home delivery industry that benefitted from people staying indoors and choosing to order essential groceries from the comfort of their homes. Instacart posted its first profitable quarter in April 2020 and it has since surpassed its financial goals through to 2022. Digital payments also grew by over 50% in 2020 as people eschewed cash for contactless payment options to avoid contamination. The prospect of COVID has also increased funding for biotechnology companies that expect the worldwide market cap for the industry to reach $727 billion dollars by 2025.

Apart from the industries bolstered by the impact of COVID, many other industries continued their march towards progress. The rise of artificial intelligence is likely to exert its influence on a wide range of industries such as autonomous vehicles, logistics, marketing, data analytics, automation, and more. The publication of the GPT-3 (a neural network machine learning model) in June 2020 and the subsequent availability of its API for commercial users bodes well for industries such as content creation, voice assistants, chatbots, and others that rely on examining and drawing conclusions from huge amounts of textual data.

One of the major sticking points for existing companies, looking to harness some of the groundbreaking innovations that are taking place over multiple industries, is finding a way to incorporate them into their own products and services. The amount of effort that has to be poured into R&D to reach the needed technological capability can seem prohibitive.

EarlyBirds is looking to solve this problem for established companies willing to become early adopters by bringing them in contact with innovators who have tailor-made solutions ready to solve their industry’s most immediate problems. EarlyBirds brings together early adopters, innovators, and subject matter experts to create a mutually beneficial, seamless transfer of knowledge that helps meet the goals of all involved parties. Startup, scaleup and even mature innovators get introduced to Early Adopter organisations that have the resources to fund their innovations and the large businesses get to benefit from the work put in by these innovative companies. Subject matter experts ease the process of discovery by helping mature organizations find and focus on the innovators who show the most promise.

 

Readers can find out more about EarlyBirds and its open innovation ecosystem by heading over to its website at earlybirds.io.