OWP liVe Report

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Pre-crisis, all threewere roughly equivalent priorities across the organizations surveyed. Frommid-April, survival became the clear priority and innovationwas deprioritized. Bymid-June, however, it was no longer the sole focus and innovation grewas a priority. “Innovation is important at this stage of the crisis, but that doesn’t mean that it’s easy to do.” Innovationmatters evenmid-crisis Organizations that increased their prioritization of innovation – newrevenue streams and businessmodels – had a stronger performance during the crisis. Decreasing the prioritization of innovation led to decreased performance. Actively leveraging digital technology for crisis response is especially important for organizationswithhistorically under- developed tech. “Innovation is important at this stage of the crisis, but that doesn’tmean that it’s easy to do,”Wade noted. “The data suggests that there’s no better time than right now to acceleratewhat you’re doing,” he added, because from

a strategic perspective,many cultural barriers have been removed, thanks to the pandemic and the accompanying economic downturn. “Fromthe individual perspective, barriers have been removed: peoplewho tended to be skeptical about how technologywould affect theirwork have realized that they can work fromhome.”

POLL OF THE SESSION’S OWP liVe PARTICIPANTS How has the pandemic affected your company’s digital transformation?

Accelerated 62%

Significantly accelerated 36%