I’ve had the great privilege to connect with most of our customers this week to discuss their priorities and concerns amid the coronavirus outbreak, and more importantly, to get feedback on their most pressing requirements and challenges—and in all my conversations, the one thing that kept coming to mind was a quote I’ve always liked:

“Being challenged in life is inevitable, being defeated is optional.” – Roger Crawford

I’ve been working with innovators for 16 years and I’m continually amazed at the optimistic and resilient problem-solving nature of people with an innovative mindset. Although they are no doubt impacted personally like all of us, they’re working effortlessly within their companies to identify game-changing opportunities and solutions to maintain—or even boost, in some cases—their organization’s growth in these times of uncertainty. Here are a few tips I’ve gathered from my conversations for you to consider to achieve the same level of business value our customers are realizing during this coronavirus pandemic:

  • Sharing best practices globally: the coronavirus’ social and economic impacts have been around since December of last year. For companies who have locations in Asia, they’re learning quickly from those teams on how to adapt in Europe and North America.
  • Focusing on efficiencies and costs: We’ve all seen the economic news, so whatever each of us needs to do to become more efficient in the next 3-12 months will be critical.
  • Creative ways to respond: Every company serves others, whether it’s other businesses or individuals, and in this moment, we need creative, empathetic and value-add ways to respond and serve our customers.
  • Engaging employees in gathering the voice of the customer: Now, more than ever, it’s critical to have a clear voice of the customer. The best way to do that is to have an open, collaborative dialogue with front-line employees who are talking to customers every day.
  • Surprisingly, accelerating tech scouting to rapidly adjust to virtual models: I should have seen this one coming because if we cannot physically connect with our service and healthcare providers we need new methods and we need them now;  accelerating virtual interactions is one way to make a rapid change.

What this tells us is our innovators are moving to the front lines of what is happening right now in the core business, and they’re bringing with them the best kind of firepower to support collaboration, creativity and risk tolerance—and it’s a great, tangible example of what we all need right now. So listen, collaborate, and support your employees, customers, partners and suppliers with the right collaborative problem-solving tools they need in this ever-evolving crisis. Collaboration is key, after all, especially in times of uncertainty, which is why I invite you to explore our ongoing series of COVID-19 Business Threat Challenge Starters designed for customers and non-customers alike. The purpose of this series is to support your organization’s ideation initiatives by using a set of Challenge Focus Topics that can help you, just as it helps our customers, to better frame, ideate around and solve business challenges caused by the coronavirus outbreak.

 

About the Author

Sara Husk (M.B.A) is Planbox’s Chief Customer Officer and an experienced innovation practitioner with over 16 years of experience. As part of Planbox’s innovation management expert team, Sara is directly involved in helping Fortune 2000 organizations frame their innovation initiatives into their entire ecosystem as a core competency. By assisting and participating in the deployment of many award-winning and highly recognizable innovation programs, Sara is helping companies generate well over 1,000+ ROI with new revenue and cost savings. Sara is actively looking into assisting organizations to improve on their innovation programs such as continuous improvements, breakthrough innovations, corporate venturing, tech scouting, employee engagement, and more.