Digital to change business in a post-COVID-19 world

Since the start of the pandemic, we  have witnessed a lot of changes in the world around us. Many businesses have suffered huge losses amid the crisis, whilst others achieved success by turning challenges into meaningful change. What are the requirements today to launch and sustain a successful venture?

Business leaders, entrepreneurs and venture capitalists continue to discuss the change of direction in a post-COVID-19 world.

The current pandemic is pushing business models to evolve more and they are clearly leaning in the direction of digital. Laura Baldwin, president of O’Reilly Media mentions that businesses that have been able to thrive through the pandemic might not be operating only within a digital business model, but what relates all successful businesses is their strong digital culture. She adds that moving forward, businesses should be more digitally focused in a post-COVID-19 world.

Shige Ihara, CEO of NEC X, shared the company’s perspective on emerging technologies. “We are seeing several social needs and drivers that have arisen during the pandemic which are stimulating new technology development and areas for potential economic growth,” Ihara says. Prominent among these areas are virtual reality and augmented reality. “The market has already seen adoption for military and gaming applications, as well as training for advanced surgery,” he explains. “As remote work becomes the new normal, we believe VR/AR is a growth area that will provide new and better interfaces for groupware as well as web conferencing. Startups are already developing the VR/AR platforms and software that will enable these improvements.”

Ihara adds that we should keep an eye open for digital currencies, new cryptocurrencies have already appeared in the market, but the potential is still untapped for the emergence of a larger scale cryptocurrency system.