There is a real increasing pressure to totally reinvent my business. The past business paradigm of reaching out, providing value, and making money is still there. Still, it is how we all undergo the changes needed in a radically different set of economic circumstances.

We all are seeing the world in a very different light, in some ways a very harsh one, where the old normals are breaking down. The change in our world is even a little scary, it actually is giving me a little “angst.” I need to put some reorder into my world.

Firstly as many of you know, I have been investing my time in growing my understanding, expertise, and thinking over three “core” topics. My Innovation intent has been central to this for twenty years, but this has ‘funneled down’ into recognizing the value of ecosystems as the business design for innovation to thrive and deliver more significant value creation. In the past two-plus years, the whole Energy Transition has been my vehicle to apply my innovation learning and ecosystem thinking.

We must hold on to much of what we have, but we really will be forced to abandon so much of our accepted norm.

My search or questioning is not about abandoning what I have invested over these years, it is how can I redirect it. To shift its position to actively contribute in new ways, to adapt and adjust to the ‘new normal’ we all must seriously recognize is coming towards us.

We are all undergoing such a paradigm shift at present, not just in the present “lockdowns” or social distancing rules imposed but how these will increasingly have an impact on our health, social and economic well-being.

The world just might never be the same.

The economic fallout is going to be a very rough time in the coming weeks and months. The levels of job loss, bankruptcies, and our old reliance on what we thought were stable businesses will be highly challenged. We are certainly in a VUCA world now, so often used to describe changes, but it can now be applied in a real reality we are facing. VUCA is short for volatility, uncertainty, complexity, and ambiguity,

Something we are all undergoing and experiencing is needing us all to re-evaluate. It is way beyond social distancing, avoiding the Corona Virus or suffering lockdown, it is emerging out from this into a new world of different realities.

A paradigm shift is hitting us.

Yet we are undergoing such a paradigm shift I went back to look at the word “paradigm” to see its meaning at this point of time.

Firstly, a paradigm shift is defined as “an important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way.” When you change paradigms, you’re changing how you think about something.

We are being challenged in our system of beliefs, ideas, values, and habits that are a way of thinking about the real world and what it means. A possible change from one way of thinking to another.

To get to this new paradigm, we need to establish a distinct set of concepts or thought patterns, including theories, research methods, postulates, and standards for what constitutes legitimate contributions to a field. We are in the “eye” of the coronavirus storm, so this is relatively difficult, but we need to become hyper-alert of how the changes will work and what they mean for each of us.

I used the visual above of the meteor hitting earth and wiping out the dinosaurs and a way of life as a warning of what cannot be allows to happen. The economy in the next few years may not have the same impact but it will impact us all!

We are possibly at a point in time, maybe the lifetime of all of us, one that alters the way we work, interact, and shift our thinking by this current event we are in. I can’t imagine we will return to our past normal; we need to search for a new one, each of us, and this new understanding becomes part of the new normal.

A paradigm shift is a significant change in the concepts and practices of how something works, it will mean different points of power, inequality, and social change. We are entering a position of significant disruption. We need leadership and guidance to help us form a view of the world, guided by the principles of objectivity, knowability, and deductive logic, not opportunism and self-interest.

Having a new understanding will eventually shape our day to day life. They control how you react to a situation, What actions you are taking for certain things and how you will solve a problem, a new way of working or living.

Accordingly, a paradigm shift is defined as “an important change that happens when the usual way of thinking about or doing something is replaced by a new and different way.”

I read a view today offered by Brian Solis, “Get ready for the ‘Novel Economy’ and recovering from COVID-19 fallout.”

Brian Solis has been one of the industry’s most influential voices when it comes to humanizing disruptive technology trends and is the Global Innovation Evangelist at Salesforce. This post was shared by Vala Afshar, the Chief Digital Evangelist for Salesforce. (@ValaAfshar)

“We are entering what I refer to as a #NovelEconomy. Novel means new and unusual, and that accurately describes these times. In a business sense, Novel represents a new strain of market conditions that are not fully identified or understood. Thus, we have no pre-existing defenses or experience against this level of astonishing disruption. We were all simultaneously thrust into a melee of panic, fear, confusion, and disorder. There’s really no widespread expertise, playbooks, or best practices to guide us. Nor, is there a preventative business vaccine to protect us from this or future disruption…yet. But truth be told, we don’t really want to respond with preexisting roadmaps or checklists. Herein lies the opportunity”

A new normal is upon us, the paradigm shift that will change the World. We need all to think about what the shift means and what opportunity or concerns this will bring us.

As more of our working becomes remote, we will increasingly need to rely on building a strong network of relationships, our need for multiple ecosystems to function and thrive in a post-corona virus world. “At a distance” sounds daunting, but it is not. I have worked remotely for nearly twenty years, and the value has progressively shifted over that time.

Brian offers three phases that make sense to me to frame my own new understanding of recovery:

1) Survive- Reaction to Crisis

2) Build, Secure, and Operationalize for Transition State

3) Thrive – Next Normal Business Continuity, Disruption Proofing, and Innovating Forward

As Brian suggests in his post, “our preexisting roadmaps are going to be inadequate.”

Hence my search for a new direction to apply what I know in a rapidly changing world where innovation, ecosystems, and networks will become important as ‘new’ ways of working.

As for the Energy transition part, well, we are still in a world that is rapidly warming, so investing in clean energy makes societal sense to curb climate change. If we don’t address this, climate warming is possibly our next global crisis that is, even more, going to be on a different ‘order of magnitude’ to this current virus crisis.

Clean energy, combined with intense climate action, is positioning the world even more dramatically into a better future. Getting our planet back into balance may not stop pandemics, floods, or disasters from happening in the near term, but we need a new order, that new normal. A new normal that often emerges out of a crisis.

He finishes with, “Our challenge and the gift before us is that we’re looking at a blank canvas for what lies ahead” I do not believe this is a blank canvas, but we must re-work the canvas while we can.

Let’s not load any canvas with old paradigms.

One of the possible consequences of the current “virus crisis” is the way we spend our resources and money to bail us all out of the economic downturn. For instance, will it be supporting fossil fuels due to intense lobbying to gain a short-term response? Or will we attempt to capitalize on the need for a long-term shift towards sustainable renewables? One that is reinforcing a permanent trend of generating new growth, new markets, new jobs, and protecting our future health and move towards that cleaner, safer future we all should seek ‘post’ this current period. Will it be to try and take us back to a consumption-driven economy where we keep throwing away precious resources that NEVER have their real cost built-in. Will we ’embrace’ the value of a circular economy at last?

My renewal needs a “higher” order to reframe my work.

We need to shift towards better foresight, fresh ways to envisage our world, reigniting our “collective imaginations.” We have been very complacent, we are at a time of heeding a ‘wake-up call,’ especially here in the Western world.

The awakening might be desire, taking to task those that have deflected investment money in our health systems, infrastructure, education, inventions, and investing in the needed global challenges we have talked about, given token investment.

How each of us makes sense of the new world before us will determine destruction or emergence. We need to channel as much as we can into new innovation to offer a new set of societal dynamics. Ones I believe would lead to higher levels of economic development, better welfare, and increase opportunities for more significant value creation for the broader society than was never offered in the old order, pre-corona virus, just talked about.

Perhaps one “higher-order” for me might be increased activism to bring about the changes that are clearly needed will become more central to my work?

The post A new normal is upon us, the paradigm shift that will change the World. first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.

Being in a personal crisis is one thing, but being in a global one is a whole lot different. So much is totally out of your control. You can rant and rave at some of the decisions have been made, or likely to come on some current performances.

Often you are left wondering where the insights or collective thinking was trying to offset the events that were unprecedented and scary but have now put us into such a massive economic downturn.

The decision to throw a protective shield around our health systems made sense, but the human suffering unfolding is going to be very tough on those that made these decisions, as it is to nearly everyone else. Facing this economic collapse is mindblowing.

We all are coming to grips with what this means in our working lives. We are in for immediate shifts in our working environment as we emerge from “lockdown.”

Innovation is going to become central to overcoming huge global problems of keeping our distance, inventing, and implementing the solutions to keep our “social distance” and know we are safe or not..

That will come from the use of the physical space and technology warning us of possible threats. Invention and innovation thinking will come to the fore; technology will be far more used to protect us, to notify us or alert us.

We will become even more reliant on our smartphone. “don’t leave home without it” will become a growing mantra. The reliance on our smartphone is going to mean we all can be identified, tracked in some form or other. Do we lose our freedom or do we gain our freedom?

If social distancing is going to be with us for some time, to protect the majority of people to being exposed to the coronavirus, this “distancing” makes for more remote lives, reliant on technology to bridge the human contacts of the past.

Separation is going to be high on our need to understand all of what this means in phycological and personal ways. What will this mean to our daily routines, as we unlearn and then rapidly attempt to learn a new level of normal

In some ways, Asian societies are better placed than Western ones.

In some ways, Asian societies have some advantages. They have social distance as part of their lives already. I wrote a post some years back “The ‘pull’ of the dual forces within our cultural thinking” describing several differences; we need to further explore the social distancing one that I did not specifically mention in that post, here.

There is real importance in fully appreciating sometimes considerable differences between not only cultures but ways different groups go about their ‘collective’ business. We need to recognize differences and balance them. Now is the time to also learn from Asia in this ‘distancing need’

“Hail and greet” become potentially dangerous.

We need to learn social distancing rules that are for many in Asian societies second nature. We like to hug, embrace, kiss far more readily; we like to get closer to the person we are talking too, which is the opposite in Asia. That formality, if you want to label it that way, gives them a better ability to distance themselves. We in the West exhibit a more extrovert manner, how will that change if we are forced to keep our distance due to the unknown enemy of this virus.

Will we want to shake hands as liberally as we have done, or will we take the guide from our Chinese, South Asian or Japanese communities that politely bow, nod their heads, or put their hands over their heart. Social distancing goes way beyond standing 6 feet away.

I was reading today this article Our offices will never be the same after COVID-19. Here’s what they could look like, written for Fast company. It is about the work being undertaken by Cushman & Wakefield as they have been helping 10,000 organizations in China move nearly one million people back to work. Using learnings gathered in China, along with World Health Organization data and the advice of medical specialists, the firm developed a new concept inside its own Amsterdam headquarters dubbed the Six Feet Office.”

The core premise is to ensure that six feet, the recommended measurement for safe social distancing, stays between people at all times. This behavior is encouraged through properly spaced desks, but also visual signals, such as a circle embedded in the carpeting around each desk to ensure people don’t get too close.

Can you imagine what this means in holding conference room meetings, those informal meetings around the “water cooler” or preparing your snack in the one kitchen space when you are required to have six feet or nearly two meters between you and the other person? How will that practically work? That goes way beyond any established practices we see today, anywhere.

Will we be structuring our days differently? We need to be creative and imaginative.

The daily meeting, gathered in the bosses office, can’t happen; it must be done at a distance. Perhaps we introduce the tannoy from years back, the public address system, where the daily “instructions” got broadcasted across the shop or work floor. Now that is a throwback, or will it come through a desktop message, as you log on.

Will we be using “instant messaging” even more? Presently these have served a purpose, liberally called collaboration tools. Still, the world of “distant collaborating” we are rapidly entering is going to bring out a slue of new tools to make this a newly emerging practice and business opportunity for many.

How will we be changing our work habits; how will we distance ourselves on public transport, for instance? Clearly, when we find a vaccination for the Corona Virus much of these new restrictions can be relaxed, but will they change our nature of work in the interim and the old ‘normal’ never returns.

Has the future of work arrived in a very unexpected way? The adjustments are immediate and huge.

Where is innovation going to rapidly figure in delivering the changes we all need to think about in this world, waiting for a vaccine not just to be developed but to be administered, to EIGHT billion people. How will we handle that, that needs a very creative way to track, trace, inoculate, and build the scale required.

How long will we be in this world of required “social distancing?” What do we need to change to recognize it is with us for some months or even longer.

The post The immediate shift in work and social norms needs innovation first appeared on Building Your Innovation & Ecosystem Intelligence.