How can technology development enable post-COVID-19 growth?

The COVID-19 experience has far-reaching effect on people’s lives. We believe this will have lasting impact on demand patterns and preferences of people and businesses in the post-COVID-19 future. Winners will adapt to the New Normal by launching products and services fit for the new opportunities. Losers … well, they will lose when not responding to customer requirements

I am a leader of a group of very talented technology and product developers at IPU, so naturally I believe in the opportunities of applying new and technologies, fit for the New Normal.

In a series of articles my colleagues and I will share our insights and recommendations for how to join the winning team of companies launching products and services that are aligned with the post-COVID-19 customer expectations. The key learning point, we have learned so far during this crisis, is expecting the unexpected. Therefor we do not have a final master plan, detailing the scope and key messages to convene in the series of articles.

We will start our journey towards the launch of New Normal products and services by studying, what we believe are important experiences for people during the ongoing COVID-19 crisis, experiences that may have significant impact on their behavior and preferences as consumers, clients, advisors and decision makers in the post-COVID-19 era. We call it the COVID-19 Experience Base. (Figure 1).

In later articles we will study the implications the COVID-19 Experience Base may have on customers’ expectations to products and services – the Changed Demand Patterns – and opportunities for new/changed products and services – New Normal Product & Services Opportunities. We also intend to share our take on how to get started by capturing the voice of customers, translating that into product plan updates and defining technical requirements, and specifying development projects for delivering the new functionality.

Figure 1 – The journey from understanding COVID-19 experiences to launching new products and services

We are looking forward to sharing our thoughts with you in this turbulent period. We hope they will inspire and provoke you, and we will be very interested in discussing them with you, so we all take a leap forward in realizing the opportunities in the post-COVID-19 New Normal world.