Rodolfo Ramírez saw how what has taken him 18 years to instill in companies, fell apart in a matter of months. The coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19) stopped the innovation projects of companies that, little by little, have been understanding the importance of including this element in their business plans.
According to the founder and CEO of RedBox, an agency specialized in generating innovation, during the health crisis the investment that companies make in the processes that allow improving, renewing and creating products and services was reduced between 20% and 30%. novel for the market.
Ramírez explains that companies in Mexico were not prepared to face a crisis like the one left by the coronavirus. Not even those that boasted of having risk manuals, innovative development plans, or sound financial strategies.
“Nobody was prepared. The wave came for everyone. Maybe he only hit some of them on the legs, while others he rolled over and even drowned them, but in the end it affected everyone ”, mentions the entrepreneur who since 2002 has developed innovation projects for 80 brands from 10 different countries, such as Sabritas , Kidzania, DHL and Sportsworld, BBVA and Coca-Cola.
But this percentage is not so drastic. The CEO of RedBox explains that, in the midst of a situation where there were firms that were able to make the decision to completely eliminate the innovation budget, they only chose to reduce it. “Companies that were seriously threatened realized that this was the time to reinvent themselves to ensure their future,” he says.
RedBox customers invest, on average, 2% of their total annual sales in innovation. 95% of them are large companies and the remaining 5% are SMEs and startups.
Emergency plan
Under this thought of concentrating efforts to face the health crisis and move forward, RedBox created the Phoenix Plan, a strategy with the aim of giving the client clarity on how to act in the midst of uncertainty.
“Nobody knew where to move, so we decided to decode some messages to help them make innovation decisions and, as was obvious, to reinvent themselves”, details the general director of the agency.
The Phoenix Plan, which was the result of an analysis carried out with economists, financial rating agencies, clients and health experts, is made up of four dimensions:
1. Tension. This part of the plan was implemented during the first months of the health contingency. The objective was to understand what the pandemic meant for companies and generate strategies to guarantee its continuity. New ways of working, helping employees and society were some of the actions that were implemented.
2. Thawing. Once the containment measures were reduced, most of the companies were able to reactivate their activities. This implied moving to a new operating model, with sanitary rules and with new customer satisfaction to meet. At this stage, construction was key.
3. Reactivation. Without having finished the pandemic, but already with the opportunity to continue operating without so many restrictions, firms have to think about generating business alliances, including new markets and even experimenting with products or services from a sector other than the one of origin. Consumption habits are completely different from those that existed before the pandemic, so staying in the same place is a serious mistake.
4. Transformation. Here there is already a complete clarity of the panorama, it is already understood that the pandemic is part of the day to day and that they have to learn to do business with it. Companies must evolve and be able to face new rebounds. To get to this stage it is necessary to innovate and react as quickly as the market demands.
“It is still very risky to give a forecast on whether investment will take off after the pandemic, since just as there will be some companies that need to reinvent themselves to return to the market, there will be others that only need to maintain the order they have until now. But what is true is that innovation will be necessary ”, concludes Ramírez.
