Paving a path for a post‐COVID‐19 innovative environment
本文探讨COVID-19疫情如何促使企业加速创新，分析疫情与非疫情环境下创新的区别，并提出后疫情时代新产品开发的研究方向。
Cooper's (2021) “Accelerating Innovation: Some Lessons from the Pandemic” offers a clear reminder of not only the benefits but also the reality of acceleration in new product development. Indeed, when called upon to respond to dramatic shifts in the environment due to the COVID-19 pandemic, many firms across various industry sectors quickly pivoted to generate new products or services. Some of these pivots involved minor changes to react to new, immediate needs. For example, numerous clothing retailers added cloth face masks to their product line and retailers offered curbside pick-up to their delivery options. Other changes involved breakthrough products, such as the KC N901 smart helmet that can screen for fever within a two-meter radius (kcwearable.com) and robot nurses designed to deliver medicine and meals in northern Italy (Luo & Galasso, 2020). Firms have also engaged in alliances to pool their resources and accelerate the development of innovations to fight the virus. For example, Ford Motor Company transformed its production facilities while collaborating with GE Healthcare to build essential, life-saving ventilators (Beresford, 2020), and the University of Oxford and AstraZeneca collaborated to develop the Oxford-AstraZeneca COVID-19 vaccine in a record time of 10 months. Across the five approaches that Cooper offers for accelerated innovation, he points to various ways in which firms can more fully commit and master the art of acceleration in their new product development processes. These approaches range from small modifications in how teams are organized to larger process-based approaches to pursue lean or agile management. The use of focused project teams and prioritization on fewer projects so that these projects receive the necessary resources are key avenues to gain efficiency and financial success in the innovation pipeline (e.g., Bloch et al., 2007). Digital tools used in rapid prototyping remain salient, and newer AI-related tools offer vast opportunities for accelerating product development. Moreover, principles of lean development and agile development, often using sprints as a transformative approach (e.g., Knapp et al., 2016) continue to offer new mechanisms for firms to accelerate their innovation processes. Therefore, it is worth asking why there is no widespread pursuit of acceleration without the impetus of a pandemic. In essence, I argue that there are two key distinctions that impel firms to more readily pursue accelerated new product development when faced with a pandemic. First, whereas a firm has the potential to anticipate disruptive change in a competitive marketplace, a pandemic is unexpected. Market sensing capabilities, which reflect a firm's ability to learn about customers, competitors, channel members, and changes in the market environment (e.g., Day, 1994), will not help a firm predict a pandemic's occurrence. Although experts believe that additional pandemics will occur in the future, they emphasize that the timing and severity of a pandemic cannot be predicted (e.g., Taubenberger et al., 2007). In contrast, this with a firm's ability to sense disruptive market shifts when it senses trends in marketplace changes based on factors such as consumer needs, government policies, and technological advancements. For example, Tesla responded to an unmet, inherent consumer need when it disrupted the automotive industry with its battery advancements, driving range, and performance. Coupled with increasingly strict environmental policies across numerous countries, incumbent automotive firms had the potential to predict these shifts in the marketplace. Second, the COVID-19 pandemic has presented a heightened degree of uncertainty driven by the virus’ severity, new variants, and governments’ intervention policies. Double jeopardy also exists in how actions that governments and firms make during the pandemic will generate additional unforeseen outcomes. Inherent in this uncertainty is a contraction in demand across many industry sectors, as customers face financial hardship, loss of income, and health concerns. Firms that wait to resolve the uncertainty will risk missed opportunities and potential failure. Consequently, the degree of desperation for firm survival during COVID-19, rather than the quest for competitive advantage in a non-pandemic environment, is likely to spark accelerated innovation. Importantly, firms should consider the way in which COVID-19 may differentially shift the landscape after the pandemic subsides. I offer two lenses for new product development in a post-pandemic environment, focusing on how the COVID-19 pandemic: (a) will trigger the development of new products and services and (b) transform the way in which firms engage in innovation. Pandemics, in general, tend to stimulate new product and service innovation. For example, the Black Plague's (1347–1351) death toll (i.e., 30%–50% of Europe's population), which generated a significant shortage in labor, gave rise to new products such as hourglasses and eyeglasses to improve working conditions and to product improvements such as better-quality paper as the result of the better income distribution (e.g., Pamuk, 2007). At the turn of the 21st century, longer non-pharmaceutical interventions during the Spanish flu led to higher patenting rates, particularly in areas such as electricity and mechanical engineering (Berkes et al., 2020). Moreover, its significant death toll generated new designs for residential buildings to improve living conditions and centralized healthcare services in France, Germany, and the United Kingdom (UK) to expand access to healthcare (McDonald, 2020). In 2002–2004, policies in Asian countries during the SARS pandemic involved quarantines, and firms that launched ecommerce services (e.g., Alibaba and JD.com) grew to become leading online retailers (Huddleston, 2020). The COVID-19 pandemic is also likely to spark innovation. With consumers ultimately determining demand for new products, the severity and duration of non-pharmaceutical interventions will play an important role. With COVID-19, consumers have faced heightened uncertainty, financial constraints, scarcity, and lack of social connection, producing a life event stressor that can have long-term effects. Yet, the COVID-19 pandemic has also occurred during a time when consumers have started to widely adopt smart products and cloud services into their daily lives, which will also have implications for post-COVID-19 products and services. Consumers desire social connection, efficiency, entertainment, and safety in their smart home devices (Shanks & Hintermann, 2019). These needs were heightened during COVID-19, as consumers faced quarantines and social distancing for much of 2020 and into 2021. Although consumers’ interest in smart products may dip during COVID-19’s initial recovery period as consumers pursue social engagement over certain products, there is likely to be heightened interest in smart products in the long term. Moreover, it is very likely that the pandemic will generate enduring needs for a sense of security and convenience. As a result, research could explore the following avenues: Other valuable research opportunities could center on new products or services within innovation eco-systems, the sharing economy, and opportunities for new distribution channels or new subscription services. The COVID-19 pandemic also has the potential to transform the way in which firms engage in innovation. For instance, limited social interactions reduce localized knowledge spillovers (Jaffe et al., 1993) that benefit innovation. While Berkes et al. (2020) show that longer non-pharmaceutical interventions during the Spanish flu did not detrimentally impact the innovation process, the ban on public gatherings during that pandemic primarily impacted restaurants, theaters, and schools. In contrast, during the early onset of the COVID-19 pandemic, cities within the United States and countries around the world went into lockdown, forcing all non-essential organizations to temporarily close or shift to virtual, work-from-home offices. As this progressed throughout the year, companies found that employees could be productive virtually, and many firms (e.g., Amazon, Infosys, Siemens) made plans for their employees to work remotely either temporarily or permanently. This shift will influence the new product development process. As new product development teams continue to disperse geographically (McDonough et al., 2001), teamwork quality is more difficult to achieve yet essential to team performance (Hoegl et al., 2007). Digital tools for communication, product design, and knowledge management have become integrated into the new product development process (Marion & Fixson, 2020). Yet, social interaction is necessary for effective knowledge sharing and generation (Nonaka, 1994), which continues to face challenges even with current digital tools. During the COVID-19 pandemic, firms often relied on cloud platforms for video, voice, and content sharing across mobile devices, desktops, and room systems (e.g., Zoom™, Microsoft Teams™). Of significant importance is whether cloud-based platforms can enable localized knowledge sharing across individuals within virtual teams, whether these team members are part of an internal cross-functional new product development team or part of an inter-firm innovation collaboration effort. Moreover, while virtual platforms have been used for open innovation, including open-sourcing projects, firms with in-house innovation labs (e.g., Cisco's CHILL, Philips Design, Xerox PARC) will be challenged to determine how to best incorporate new virtual technologies to retain their innovativeness. Consequently, important research opportunities emerge: In sum, acceleration in new product development remains essential for firms to successfully pivot in response to significant challenges in the environment. Importantly, firms should recognize that the COVID-19 pandemic will shift the types of products and services needed within the marketplace as well as the innovation process itself. Consequently, firms will need to build agile management into their innovation processes to cope with uncertainty and more quickly adapt to marketplace changes. Rebecca J. Slotegraaf is the Neal Gilliatt Chair in Marketing and Chairperson of the Doctoral Programs at the Kelley School of Business, Indiana University. Her research focuses broadly on new product introduction and design, brand strength, and marketing assets and capabilities, and has appeared in several top marketing and management journals. Rebecca serves as an Area Editor for the Journal of Marketing and the Journal of Product Innovation Management and on the editorial review boards of several leading journals.