Finding light in the darkness - what opportunities has the pandemic brought us?

Jens Thraenhart, CEO & Founder,

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Jens Thraenhart, CEO & Founder,

To say that 2020 was an extraordinary year is an understatement. But instead of complaining, we should be positive and thank for the learnings and the developments the pandemic has brought us. The year ultimately may result in accelerated digital transformation, enhanced resilience to create stronger communities and being better prepared for future threats such as climate change and pandemics, as well as innovative new ventures and initiatives to build back better for a stronger tomorrow.

Technology as an enabler plays an even bigger role in our daily lives. We have seen a year where many people for the first time attended virtual conferences, and even closed-door board meetings were held online. Many people ordered their meals online for the first time, and people didn’t feel awkward ordering their clothes and shoes from e-retailers instead of trying in a physical store. This kind of behavior increased in adoption, which would have taken many more years, if ever, to get to the comfort-level it is today. In China, live streaming events broke record sales numbers, and China showed the world how to track their population, and further gain intelligence via e-payments. Even in western countries, tracing apps, for the benefit of controlling infectious diseases, are now accepted - something which prior to COVID-19 was met with high skepticism due to privacy concerns.
These are just some of the many examples how 2020 opened the doors for technology powering collaborative frameworks to make the world a better place.

In 2020, our company Chameleon Strategies was recognized by CIO Asia Pacific Magazine for its approach to building collaborative frameworks via its Enwoke stakeholder engagement system. We used the year to rebuild the entire technology from scratch, and evolved the system into platform to bring together community stakeholders members of any size or type in order to better cooperate in order to enhance the value of the individual organization and the overall communities. The platform provides marketing automation tools which drives capacity of individual businesses, and results in overall stronger resilience of the community, being it a tourism destination, associations, chambers of commerce, hotel brands, to shopping malls. The sky is a limit, as we live in a world of communities and tribes, many of them not organized to cooperate, but most lacking to execute on a vision of collaboration. This includes businesses units that should collaborate to increase overall brand value and shareholder value by reducing inefficiencies, to businesses that compete, but may increase market share by working together.

Any business can be part of Enwoke, and its content is distributed to relevant portals. For example a restaurant in Bangkok can be part of the Thailand food website by the Thai Tourism Authority, the Mekong Tourism destination website, and the website of the hotel company (as the restaurant is part of a hotel), in case all these websites are powered by Enwoke. An entrepreneur could even use Enwoke to develop a website to curate the best cooking classes in the world, which could then also include the restaurant in this example.

My prediction for 2021 is that, driven by technological innovations, the playing field is more open for smaller businesses to compete, which opens up possibilities for a more inclusive ecosystem. Due to the fact that competition will increase, and budget will be limited, leveraging the power of many, or in other words drive value by engaging the ‘long-tail’, will be the biggest opportunity, for small businesses to collaborate with community members, and for bigger organizations to engage their business units. Especially COVID-19 has taught us that “we are stronger together”. 2021 will be an opportunity to leverage technology to drive engagement and collaboration to increase resilience to be better prepared for future challenges.