Blog Post

Brick and mortar retail, traditional banks, and corporates are faced with huge organizational challenges, especially those around efficiency, that many younger, more agile companies did not have. Working from home has been organic for a growing percentage of start-ups around the world already pre-pandemic, and it gave them a head start as the rest of the world tried to adapt. Without the need for expensive and often inefficient business travel or private club memberships, access to new partners and investors is now just a zoom call away.

To make change you must find the energy to not just start but complete the change. It is all about energy and persistence, because it's the process, not the beginning that is difficult. There are always a lot of distractions and discussions, but real change comes when there is a singular obsession with making it happen.

The world is shifting to manufacturing locally to meet its own needs. Countries thrive when they are net producers of physical products. Conversely, they shrink when they are net consumers of these products. As challenging as it is, dealing with the novel coronavirus has given countries, big and small, rich and poor, the unexpected opportunity to rethink and redevelop their own local supply networks; to take control of manufacturing and distribution in everything from their medical (e.g. vaccines) to their economic (onshoring) security.

To make change happen, we need to think differently, and build regionally. Countries don't need to build the entire product. They can build parts, and share them more narrowly amongst their neighbor countries so the “neighborhood” is self-sufficient. But many parts of the world are not equipped for manufacturing; their infrastructures are inadequate. Digitisation makes it possible to overcome this deficiency by simplifying collaboration and information coordination, even in areas that were never outfitted for manufacturing, as well as providing training that works in different languages and cultures. With neighborhood-centric manufacturing and distribution, local communities thrive. And subsequently, there is more equity across the planet.