Tech Tip: Why a Rough Economy Tends to Precede a Tech Boom
By • June 27, 2022 0 1423
If nothing else is certain, then you can bet that the need to improve circumstances or processes gives birth to innovations of all types. Technology has proven this time and again, as new solutions have emerged to solve previously unsolvable issues and challenges not only in the workplace, but in society as a whole. Let’s examine how economic difficulty has driven innovation, specifically in the technology sector.
Covid Has Been Tough for Everyone, Especially Businesses
Perhaps the greatest example in recent times is the Covid-19 pandemic which forced many businesses to alter their operational structures and processes practically overnight. According to a survey by McKinsey & Company, it’s expected that these trends will continue well into the future.
Nine out of ten executives believe their operations will change as a result of the pandemic, and a whopping 85 percent believe their customers’ needs will continue to change and be influenced by the pandemic even five years into the future. Most executives are looking at this opportunity to grow and adjust accordingly, though, so it’s not necessarily a bad thing.
The pandemic has provided organizations with the unique opportunity to adjust processes and operations. Some of the trends which emerged include:
- As-a-Service* offerings, as cloud-based tools make remote work easier to facilitate;
- Hybrid work approaches, as they help to boost employee satisfaction while enabling work from more places;
- Supply chain resilience, as a means of avoiding the challenges that we are facing currently.
This Kind of Innovation is Nothing New
Disasters, challenges, and problems have given rise to innovative new tools and solutions throughout history, and this is something which is unlikely to fade away. Some of the biggest private companies out there emerged as a result of the recessions in the early 1980s, many of whom used the times as an opportunity to pursue their dreams. In fact, Isaac Newton established his law of universal gravitation while remaining safely indoors during a time of the bubonic plague.
Technology Can Help Overcome Challenges
Technology has helped people make great strides forward, even when it feels like it can be difficult to go on.
*According to Wikipedia: “As a Service, or XaaS (Anything as a Service) offerings provide endpoints for customers/consumers to interface with which are usually API driven, but can commonly be controlled via a web console in a user’s web browser. Internally these often complex systems generally possess a high degree of internal automation which generally provide varying levels of fault tolerance and resiliency, the ability to scale up/down in or out to meet capacity and performance requirements of the workloads submitted to the service by its users/consumers, and are usually intended to operate their day to day functions without the need for human intervention.”
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Alan Edwards, CISM, is chief information officer at Computerware, Inc., in Vienna, Virginia.
