Stephen LOne of the more interesting things triggered by the COVID-19 pandemic has been a sudden shift in direction for just about every industry you can think of. Distilleries woke up in early March of 2020, for example, and found themselves unable to operate – at least through traditional means. So what did they do? They turned to using the equipment they already had on-hand to make hand sanitizer and masks to fill the void.
To that end, it is inevitable that industries will branch off in new and unexpected directions as a result of the pandemic. All told, there are a number of industries that are re-thinking their current (and future) products due in large part to COVID-19, all of which are more than worth exploring.
The Industries That Will Rise (and Thrive) After COVID-19
In what should come as a surprise to nobody, experts agree that one of the industries that is expected to emerge in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic has to do with those businesses that are tasked with making personal protective equipment, or PPE.
Most PPE comes with very strict expiration dates and, as the early weeks of the pandemic taught us, you can never really have too much of a surplus when it comes to supply. But interestingly, an emphasis on digital “smart” personal protective equipment seems to be the direction this industry is headed in as manufacturers attempt to make items that don’t just offer protective benefits, but that are also as easy-to-use as possible.
Smart safety glasses, for example, can supply reams of contextual information to the person wearing them to help them carry out a job, allowing them to make better and more informed decisions. This is in addition to their basic function of protecting that person’s eyes.
Another shift in technology that is expected to take place as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic has to do with enterprise virtual reality hardware and software. One recent study suggested that the enterprise VR market was already expected to hit $12.6 billion in value by 2025 before the Coronavirus pandemic ever occurred. But with social distancing mandates still in place and most employees working remotely for the foreseeable future, the pandemic seems to have acted as something of an accelerant – taking this industry in a host of unexpected directions as well.
In healthcare, for example, enterprise virtual reality has already been used to help create safer training environments for workers. Even in those early weeks of the pandemic, we saw how real estate agents leaned heavily into VR and augmented reality to use virtual tours to keep showing available homes. Because of the sheer volume of money being poured into this technology as a result of the pandemic, it’s easy to see how the innovation brought about in the last year will lead to VR becoming a permanent (and near-ubiquitous) part of the enterprise world moving forward.
In the end, it’s fair to say that the still-ongoing COVID-19 pandemic has been a significant challenge to us all. But it has also brought with it some major opportunities for those who are in a position to recognize them. Everything is currently in a state of flux – from consumer behaviors to the direction that various industries are taking – and these changes are likely not going away anytime soon. Those businesses who are able to capitalize on these opportunities and turn adversity into fortuity will be the ones that don’t just survive the pandemic, but that come out all the better on the other side because of it.
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