Business in the Time of Corona

Introduction

Gabriel García Márquez wrote in his renowned novel, Love in the Time of Cholera, that “wisdom comes to us when it can no longer do any good.” Indeed, the Corona virus has presented the global community with such a dilemma. The world has been so reliant on its sourcing from China that the disease has put major markets on a standstill as China shuts its door to the world and vice versa. However, there are many positives to integrate from the status quo into Business 4.0 and Industry 4.0.

Pandora’s Plague or Boon for Better

As individuals scurry and rethink how to educate the young, obtain food, attend meetings and readjust supply chains, humankind never realized how this Pandora’s box called Corona could be a Godsend. Did life fully stop for the business community functions, and by extension, the globe? Individuals began utilizing virtual mediums for classrooms and seminars, as well as, stopped using less commercial flights. Furthermore, we started rationing food supplies and also prioritizing our carbon footprint on other transportation mediums. We took full advantage of digital technologies to ensure ‘life went on’ and inadvertently put less pressure on the environment. The climate was something we had been hotly debating and maybe it was fitting that mother nature herself came to her own rescue

Beyond the Break

Not many can disagree that the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs) go hand-in-hand with the 4th Industrial Revolution. If commercial entities take this ‘jolt’ from the global pandemic as a que to be more proactive rather than reactive in the future, the global tribe can fully scale Business 4.0 and reap the full benefits from Industry 4.0. To have more a sustainable world an attitude shift that says ‘we will’ than ‘we have to’ may just be the difference for a happy ending in the love story between mother earth and the world of trade and technology.

Maimun Mustafa

The Writer is Serial Entrepreneur and the Executive Director of Global Chamber® Barisal