Working From Home

8Accessing Innovation

Where does innovation come from?

When we default to what we already know, instead of being inspired to discover what's possible, innovation ceases to exist. For entrepreneurs, innovation is the key to survival. After all, the most dangerous seven words in business are “that's the way we've always done things.” With the arrival of the global pandemic, the new normal opens the door for innovation and reinvention.

Certain business sectors have been hit hard in the new normal: air travel, car rental, retail shops, and more. One market that has been almost entirely wiped off the planet is live events. Conferences are big business: Allied Research (https://bit.ly/wfh-alliedresearch) says that the live event industry was valued at $1.1 billion in 2018, with projections to grow to $2.3 billion by 2026. (I'm guessing those projections have since received a revision. What's your bet?) In the past, according to Convene (https://bit.ly/wfh-convene), there were 1.9 million meetings annually (more than 5,200 every single day). Those 1.9 million meetings resulted in some big spending. If you add up planning, production, travel, and other direct expenditures, meetings and events account for $325 billion of direct spending (https://bit.ly/wfh-meetingbiz) in the United States. What are event companies going to do to take their business virtual? Can you really have an effective conference in the cloud? And a more important question: How do you define a “virtual event experience”? ...