What did you learn from 2020?
by Felix Staeritz
2020 has certainly been a year we will never forget.
Whilst we have still not overcome all the challenges Covid-19 has thrown at us, there are many reasons to be positive and many things to be grateful for as we move into the new year.
Boris Marte, Head of Erste Innovation Hub and Fightback Book Contributor, recently told us that ‘2020 triggered our imagination about what is possible’. In this newsletter, we will show you just some of these examples.
First, take air travel as one example. Daily air traffic was down by up to 75%, Lufthansa has had 71% fewer passengers compared with the year before. At the peak of the coronavirus pandemic aviation, CO2 emissions were reduced by 60%.
Second, with a look towards the medical world, Ivanka Visnjic, Professor at ESADE Business School, also shared with us her positivity surrounding the worldwide medical collaboration that has occurred this year — ‘Covid has created a collaborative ecosystem between hospitals, doctors and companies.’
When it was needed most, the global medical community came together in ways not seen before. In Spain and Italy, there are reported cases where doctors, engineers, entrepreneurs and makers had created a WhatsApp group to think about possible cheap and quick solutions for patient ventilation’ in a decisive response that solved the immediate crisis around lack of ventilators.
Lastly, Sascha Pallenberg, Head of Digital Transformation at Daimler AG, highlighted the efforts of Mercedes’ Formula 1 team to develop a ‘Continuous Positive Airway Pressure’ (CPAP) machine. This machine was desperately needed to support patients with serious lung infections. This impressive alliance resulted in this device being available for mass production which enabled greater access to this state of the art treatment for more and more patients in need.
All of these examples show that everything is possible when we focus our expertise and funds on the most pressing matters that face society as a whole.
Examples such as this show us how important collaboration and new alliances outside of fixed structures are for change.
