This blog post is based on our Innovation Without Limits webinar. The event, which I hosted, featured the insights of Jeremy White, Executive Editor, WIRED; Einar Dagfinnur Klemensson, Cloud Architect, Össur; and Safi Obeidullah, Field CTO, Citrix. Register for the webinar to access the full on-demand recording.

In the year that saw a global pandemic, innovation still managed to surface, and at a phenomenal rate in some organisations. Those who were ready and open to embrace change, have been able to use technology in new ways throughout the pandemic, and transform at scale. The companies who have it right are already seeing enormous growth and revenue gains as a result, and they are not necessarily big companies, but ones of all sizes.

Here are some of the biggest innovations and developments the world of business has seen over the past year.

Ecommerce is on the brink of overtaking traditional commerce

The pandemic changed shopping behaviour significantly with many people becoming more willing to spend money online. If we consider UK retail sales without groceries, prior to COVID-19, ecommerce was growing very slowly. At the start of 2020 online sales accounted for 30 percent of all retail, which then rose rather dramatically to 60 percent at the peak of the pandemic and has since settled back to around 40 percent to 50 percent. As Jeremy White, Executive Editor of WIRED, explains, “Ecommerce stepped up 10 percentage points in the summer of last year, which is three to five years’ growth in just two quarters. Very soon, ecommerce will take over traditional commerce in the UK and other markets.”

This shift has changed how companies, and SMEs particularly, are entering the marketplace. White cites Shopify as a huge driver within this, owing to its ease of use, allowing any website to become a functioning ecommerce platform. “In 2019, people were spending $60bn on Shopify,” White says. “In 2020 that doubled to $120bn. This makes it 40 percent of the Amazon marketplace.”

Customer interactions are going digital

The luxury sector has always been firmly routed in physical retail and creating an exceptional real-life customer experience. Throughout last year, with retail being closed, some luxury brands refused to go online and were unable to sell direct to customers. However, more forward-thinking brands have used the pandemic as an opportunity to consider how they can use to technology to advance and differentiate their customer interactions.

For example, Tag Heuer has been experimental with social media and digital channels over the past year, and the luxury watch brand has begun exploring how it can link WhatsApp, WeChat, and Messenger to its boutiques. The idea is that sales associates will be able to take live video of products for customers and communicate with them directly, to nurture a personal relationship. The company says that in five years’ time, UK ecommerce could be higher than physical commerce for Tag Heuer.

Another technology being heavily employed in the luxury sector and beyond is bots. Bots are proving ripe for innovation in the management of client and customer interaction, and although their capabilities have been quite limited to date, they are rapidly becoming more sophisticated and accurate. Facebook has a huge bot empire, and the organisation has worked with the Georgia Institute of Technology to integrate artificial intelligence into bots so that they can have natural language conversations with customers. According to White, the bots are learning how to negotiate and be competitive.

Fibre internet will transform work as we know it

White says superspeed fibre internet networks will be critical to the future of work. “Superfast broadband just won’t be fast enough in the future,” he explains. As of May 2020, only 14 percent of UK properties had access to full fibre, but the UK Government has the ambitious target to increase that to a minimum of 85 percent by 2025. To compare with Europe, full fibre was available to 44 percent of properties in France and to 80 percent of properties in Spain, in mid-2019.

In August last year, scientists at University College London (UCL) claimed to have achieved the fastest internet speeds ever, of 178 terabits/second, capable of downloading the entire Netflix catalogue in a split second. This equates to 3 million times faster than the average household connection in the UK. “They are calling this ultra-broadband,” White says, “and it is vitally important for underpinning 5G infrastructure, self-driving cars, and smart cities infrastructure.”

Meeting culture will need to evolve further

Once offices re-open and we shift to a hybrid model of work, the future of meetings, and whether individuals attend virtually or in-person, will need careful consideration, White says. Organisations, leaders, and employees will have big questions to ask themselves, such as what would prompt an in-person meeting and what software will be needed to facilitate between those in the room and those on screen? “There will be new set of dynamics and cultural changes to navigate,” White says.

He shares, “the issue with video meetings is that there is nothing unstructured, nothing serendipitous.” As a result, we have been missing out on small talk and incidental contact, which can benefit creativity and productivity, as well as individual worth and morale. “There is a reason why the Pixar building was designed for people to bump into each other: It encourages creativity and creative thinking,” White says.

The big quote of 2021 will be “Who is in the office?”

Hybrid working will require a “fundamental step change in the way we do things”, White says. “It will be a big shock for many … and there will be FOMO (fear of missing out). It’s been said that while the quote of 2020 was ‘You are on mute,’ the quote of 2021 will likely be ‘who is in the office?’”

How organisations adopt a hybrid model of work is expected to vary greatly, but there will be some common operational challenges faced. Initially, businesses will need to find a way of knowing who will be in the office on any given day, so that they can juggle workspace capacity accordingly. “Businesses may even need an increase in office space if they want everyone in on the same days for collaboration,” White explains. “Flexibility will be key.”

Being forward thinking is a form of innovation

As White says, “To have a culture of innovation it has to pervade through the whole company.” Particularly at the C-suite.

Einar Dagfinnur Klemensson, Cloud Architect at Össur, a company that builds prosthetics, concurs, and says, “We are an innovation company, not just in our products, but how we operate. … Being forward thinking is one important form of innovation.”

How well businesses thrive during this new phase of work will depend on continued innovation as well as people’s ability to adapt and regulatory change. “It’s only going to get harder as acceleration will increase. Time and time again, technology moves at such a pace that regulations aren’t there to keep pace with it. We need a situation where we are able to pre-empt things,” White says. “This time next year, hopefully, we will have something new and something that has settled down.”

Register for the Innovation Without Limits webinar to access the full on-demand recording.