Covid-19 and the response to it has left a trail of destruction. Lives have been lost or permanently altered. Economies are bruised, job losses have soared and public sector deficits are set to serve as an unpleasant reminder of the trauma for many years to come.
Many are now asking what comes next, and whether life will ever be quite the same again.
But from the rubble of the destruction, opportunities are emerging to rebuild economies, industries and systems with new and innovative ways of thinking. Tearing things down to rebuild better has been done so repeatedly in the past: towns that grow back stronger after earthquakes, Japan and Germany’s thriving post-war economies, or business innovations such as Henry Ford’s assembly line or Microsoft’s Windows operating system, for example.
In exposing many of the weaknesses in the world’s healthcare, economic and financial systems, the virus has offered both the opportunity to build back better and a roadmap for how we may do that. Companies and countries with the nerve to take those chances and create a new and improved future are likely to be well rewarded. Destruction can clear the path to innovation.
In this series of features, we will be looking on a sector-by-sector basis – from healthcare to financial services – at how investors can navigate this simultaneously exciting and disruptive change that the world needs.
Welcome to The New Future. Click on the links below to read all the articles in the series.
Covid-19 has magnified weakness and exposed opportunities. That is why this crisis could be the first since the second world war with the potential for ‘creative destruction’ – the term used by economist Joseph Schumpeter in the 1940s to describe innovation as a means of ripping up the status quo. In this intro, we run through the main industries which could benefit.
Over the next century – assuming the species makes it that far – human civilisation will undergo a technological leap equivalent to the changes seen from the birth of agriculture to the birth of the internet. Alex Newman has examined how to think about that prospect in this feature.
Britain’s response to the coronavirus pandemic has been repeatedly compared with the second world war. Perhaps the metaphor has been overworked, but in drawing comparisons with wartime Britain, policymakers can learn a great deal about rebuilding in the wake of catastrophes. And nowhere is that more pressing than in the healthcare industry.
Climate change is arguably the number one threat to our species but, although some governments were talking a good game before Covid-19, nothing like the level of spending that we have seen to combat the pandemic has been enacted. Could the virus prove a tipping point which sees greater investment in green initiatives?
