London Inc. Spring 2021 - 12

Editor's Letter Gord Delamont

Welcome to the
new age of resilience

Gord Delamont
londonincmagazine.ca
@LdnIncMag
@LdnIncMag
@LondonIncMag

THE COVID-19 HEALTH crisis nearly instantly
and very dramatically altered the priorities of makers, founders, entrepreneurs, researchers and doers
- the innovators - to solving problems related to
the pandemic and to tackle disruption.
This inevitable situation has also provided new
possibilities for the future.
Innovation has pretty much always required a
push. The need to transport goods and people led
to the invention of the wheel. Shiftwork during the
Industrial Revolution encouraged the harnessing
of electricity.
Today, those same seeds can be seen in the disruptions caused by the pandemic. As difficult as
they've been for businesses and organizations to
overcome, they've also ignited new innovations.
But the goals of and processes behind these innovations are proving to be different than their pre-pandemic counterparts.
Prior to the pandemic, most innovation initiatives aimed to increase proﬁts, keep competition at
bay or both. Now, many organizations are setting a
new innovation target: resilience.
This issue is full of local examples of resiliency in
action - Junior Achievement devising new ways
to deliver programming, Lovers atWork positioning to capitalize on the return of the home office,
Cousin Vinny's Pizza & Deli taking a downtown

12 | londonincmagazine.ca | SPRING 2021

institution uptown - and in the majority of cases,
what's demonstrated is resilience-focused innovation isn't as simple as upgrading a website or adding
e-commerce functionality. Going forward, leaders
will need to develop services and businesses that
are flexible enough to handle big, society-wide
disruptions.
Prior to the pandemic, a lot was made of the ﬁrstmover advantage - an organization's ability to be
better off than its competitors by being the ﬁrst to
market with a new product or service. The ensuing
beneﬁts of being ﬁrst come in the shape of establishing a brand, capturing new customers and reﬁning product development with customer feedback.
Innovation initiatives after the pandemic health
crisis, however, are likely to prioritize quality ahead
of speed.
A good example is curbside pickup. Every restaurant and in-store retailer under the sun raced
to implement it when Covid-19 hit. Now that it's
common, customers can now choose where to go
because the innovation is no longer exclusive. They
choose the company that offers the best curbside
service, not necessarily the one that did it ﬁrst.
Business leaders have, historically speaking,
taken a narrow view of innovation. The pandemic's
biggest silver lining might be that it's helping them
understand it in new ways.

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London Inc. Spring 2021

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