Life-Saving COVIDinnovation

Businesses are reinventing their products and services. This has been widespread during the pandemic. A Southern-style chicken and biscuits restaurant near where I live started an initiative to feed local essential workers with a box meal, ranging from hospitals to medical facilities, first-response units, post offices, grocery stores, and other essential businesses. To date, the restaurant has given almost nine thousand box meals and has also innovated in other ways to engage within the local community. They’ve launched a new curbside pickup service and created the “Neighbors Helping Neighbors Program,” which enables customers to buy “family-style” meals for local residents in need.

Across the nation, innovation is taking hold among companies of all types. Residential cleaning services have expanded to disinfecting and sanitizing the entrances of office buildings that are still in use. Main street shops from beauty salons to toy stores have begun taking online orders and offering curbside pickup or delivery. Museums and zoos are giving online tours, and fitness studios are offering virtual classes.

Small businesses are not the only ones innovating. Major international corporations have joined in, too. Spirits producers such as Pernod-Ricard, Bacardi, and Tito’s are making hand sanitizers. Ford, GE Healthcare, and 3M are partnering to make face masks and ventilators.

As businesses continue to navigate the turbulence of COVID-19, each is innovating differently. No matter if they are a cat café or an international company, each is striving to deepen connections with the communities that depend on them, and many are partnering with other organizations to help ensure we all make it through this pandemic together.