Craig Silliman, an executive vice president for a major global company, wrote, While COVID-19 has forced us to distance physically, it has brought individuals closer together. Many of us have spent years in countless meetings and meals and on airplanes with colleagues and yet never learned as much about them as we have in the past four months. When we lost our physical proximity, we created emotional bridges that connected us in new and profound ways. It turns out that it took forced distancing to bring out our most complete and authentic humanity. I believe that once we are together again physically, we will not forget what we learned while we were apart, and that will make for richer and deeper relationships for years to come.
Apple Becomes the First Major US Company to Say that the ‘Corona’ Epidemic Will Hit Its Finances
In the trade-off between liberty and security/health, security seems to have better cards. This becomes even more apparent when we consider that the shift of more governmental and business activities into the cyber realm will bring greater dangers of cyber criminality and cyber warfare, which in turn demand much greater investments in cybersecurity, or indeed, entirely new concepts of security and accompanying social and organizational changes.
In the trade-off between liberty and security/health, security seems to have better cards. This becomes even more apparent when we consider that the shift of more governmental and business activities into the cyber realm will bring greater dangers of cyber criminality and cyber warfare, which in turn demand much greater investments in cybersecurity, or indeed, entirely new concepts of security and accompanying social and organizational changes. Taken together, it appears that in the wake of the pandemic, we are moving faster towards the data-driven global network society than ever before.
Regional and domestic business travel will likely rebound first; some companies and sectors will want to resume in-person sales and customer meetings as soon as they safely can. Peer pressure may also play a part: once one company gets back to face-to-face meetings, their competitors may not want to hold back. All told, however, a survey of business-travel managers found that they expect business-travel spending in 2021 will only be half that of 2019. 5 5. Seth Borko, Wouter Geerts, and Haixia Wang, The travel industry turned upside down: Insights, analysis, and actions for travel executives, September 2020. While business travel will return at scale, and global economic growth will generate new demand, executives in the field think that it may never recover to the 2019 level.
Partner of the World Economic Forum, Novo Nordisk Foundation has taken an innovative approach since the beginning of the coronavirus pandemic, to invest millions into research and development that will prepare Denmark for future viral epidemics.
One should not expect COVID-19 to be the last pandemic the world faces. With the interconnectedness of global life and international travel and commerce, businesses should plan on periodic epidemics and pandemics and have public health systems that are prepared to deal with major outbreaks. Contagious diseases are quite common, and the world needs to invest in infrastructure, contact tracing, and treatment to guard against devastating economic repercussions. Otherwise, many places will be caught off guard and suffer debilitating health and business fallout.18 2ff7e9595c
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