One year ago, the coronavirus outbreak caused a first wave of lockdowns worldwide. Our democratic societies chose to make sacrifices in favor of protecting the freedom of people to live. These regulations placed tight restrictions on citizens, inhibiting them from continuing living their lives as they had been. For our new study, we analyzed 707 innovation projects to find out how people created new ways of fulfilling their needs during the lockdown. Beyond the results that we report in our paper, I’d like to share my personal takeaways from our study. Please be aware that my opinions draw connections beyond the scope of our study.
I believe that we need to get better at empowering local businesses and communities to be part of a collective effort of crisis management.
1) People are willing and capable of generating crisis-driven innovations in their communities.
Crisis conditions offer opportunities or even necessitate the exploration of alternative ways of satisfying needs. In our research, we came across numerous examples of innovators combining creativity and solidarity to tackle the crisis: There were runners organizing to pick up and deliver take-out to elderly people in rural areas. When supply failed to meet demand, large companies repurposed production to supply ventilators and smaller companies started producing masks. Communities launched online platforms to raise awareness for local businesses, which also launched online shops on their own. A drive-in cinema hosting a church service. Artists creating media that explain the crisis to children. Tracing apps. Social distancing picnic blankets. I could give hundreds of examples, but I’d rather refer you to covidinnovations.com.
These innovative goods, services, business models, or simple acts of solidarity enabled the satisfaction of needs that restrictions had rendered unfulfilled. They offered a way of showing and receiving affection, building and using tools to understand the current situation, providing and receiving information, or to be creative and productive at home. They offered opportunities to participate in support campaigns or the chance to share feelings with others. Many of the innovations generated income for struggling businesses, all while keeping a safe distance. Individuals, businesses and communities proved to be creative and capable enough to come up with new ways of providing relief and satisfaction.
2) Being part of innovative solutions creates a sense of purpose and control.
Innovation is a multi-player game, touching the lives of many people on the way of producing, delivering or consuming new products. In our study, we found that most innovations addressed more than one human need for, both, the people who offered and consumed them. A central theme on both sides of an innovation seemed to be the need to participate in mitigating negative effects of the crisis or contributing to a potential solution. Entrepreneurship scholars have long found that social entrepreneurship tends to transcend economic motivations and creates a sense of collective purpose among everyone involved in such joint efforts.
One year has passed since our window of observation. By the time the “third wave” hit, it is my impression that the collective entrepreneurial spirit had been somewhat dampened. Groundhogish days wore off motivation; frustration set in. Responses to the unfortunate dynamics of surging virus variants subjected citizens to ever more sacrifices and strengthened the sense of losing control — again. There’s a connection between the perceived loss of control over one’s own fate and decreased mental health during the corona crisis. Maybe we could have supported societal resistance to these tendencies by fostering innovation activities.
3) We need to support crisis-driven innovation at the local level.
Last year, the EU granted “€314 million to innovative companies to combat the virus and support recovery”. While half of these investments went to large technological and pharmaceutical corporations, the other half was awarded to a tiny fraction of the 10,000 startups and SMEs that had initially applied for a total of €26 billion in funding. This only includes companies that could afford to work on funding proposals. I cannot help but to describe this as a terribly bureaucratic top-down crisis response, which puts additional burden (of proof) on individual innovators. It simply lacks trust in the entrepreneurial spirit of citizens. This is not just about funding, but about fostering mission-oriented innovation systems during crises. Such systems would benefit from open communication and awareness of the unfulfilled needs within and around us. They may call for central community platforms and engagement strategies that motivate and guide a collective response addressing prominent needs. It may also be about fostering a culture of solidaric pro-activism: This is my neighbor, I see her store from my balcony. She opened it a couple weeks before the corona crisis hit. She’s lovely, creative, industrious. She’s hanging in there but she’s not doing great. No politician knows your block better than you do.
To make it clear: This is not at all to be understood as an argument for handing over complete responsibility to citizens by loosening restrictions or launching reopening projects for political gains at the risk of vulnerable groups. Just as human dignity, health is a fundamental human right that needs to be protected by the government because people cannot simply solve a pandemic on their own. There’s no rapid-response innovation suddenly doubling the capacity of ICUs or filling the dire need for more care professionals.
Rather, we need to understand that people are willing and capable of innovating within the boundaries of tight restrictions to satisfy unfulfilled needs for themselves and others. People are excited to join a mission to be part of the solution. We need to empower them.