Bond Capital’s Mary Meeker drew out a series of the themes emerging from both business and governmental responses to COVID-19 – here are some of the insights.

“We are in an environment the likes of which we have not experienced before,” Meeker writes. (For a full treatment, read WARC’s wrap-up:  Strategic planning has never been more important: Mary Meeker’s coronavirus insights distilled)

The connectivity that played a role in spreading the virus has also been crucial to both the unprecedented speed of research and study into COVID-19.

However, “this type of global, collective, technology-assisted, rapid response to a health-related problem has never happened before”, Meeker notes, including the collaboration between the private and public sectors/governments.

If that information has been of any use, Meeker continues, it has played a part in fashioning a set of responses that have used skills integral to the kind of technology firms that Bond Capital is expert in funding and shaping.

“These successful companies are led by planners – they have short- and long-term (10-20+ year) visions and business plans focused on data, execution, iteration, engineering and science.” The past four months have shown how data-driven planning/execution has been fundamental to effective responses.

“In both industry and government, we fully expect greater focus on forward planning with more scientists / engineers / domain experts who have seats at the table and relevant voices. This would be a good thing.”

What it boils down to is a clear illustration of why digital transformation is not a nice-to-have any more; it is now keeping businesses afloat.

This is not only visible in startups, but also in restaurants that have adapted to delivery, physical retailers forging an online presence, families communing digitally, healthcare shifting to digital, and crucially, serious willingness – from the top of the circus – to invest in the tools that make organisations competitive in digital economies.

Sourced from WARC