In entrepreneurship, we prefer to stay away from trying to make predictions about the future – so, asking me what the world will look like is a tricky one. Instead of making bold predictions, entrepreneurs rather focus on those elements they can influence themselves, and co-create the future together with stakeholders. But to answer your question, I do see a few possibilities in the entrepreneurship area. First, having lived through a pandemic, executives will want to mitigate the negative impact of potential future pandemics. This clearly creates opportunities for startups offering novel digital business solutions.
Second, and relatedly, working from home and avoiding time-consuming business travel by having online calls instead, may stay with us. While this creates various benefits, it also lowers opportunities for interpersonal trust-building and for reliance on social mechanisms in tie formation – be it between colleagues, or between organisations setting up partnerships. It will be interesting to see to what extent startups offering new technologies, like blockchain, will be able to fill this gap. Entrepreneurs are unlikely to let a good crisis go to waste.
