Are you a dinosaur in the post-Covid world without Data & AI core?

Covid19 is almost equivalent to world war 2 in terms of economic impact. Inflation-adjusted to the economic cost of world war 2 is close to $4tn and it wiped out almost 4% of the world population. While we all hope that Covid19 is not as close to world war 2 in terms of the population lost, the sheer economic loss of labour because of Covid19 is currently estimated to be $3.4tn alone with close to 24.7mn jobs lost. Governments around the world have doled out $8tn worth of economic stimulus package. Covid19 is also challenging because it is affecting the whole world at the same time, slowing the global economy across the board. 

The impact is deep and across the sectors (see the image below, source: https://institute.jpmorganchase.com/institute/research/household-income-spending/potential-economic-impacts-of-covid-19-on-families-small-businesses-communities ) not only impacting retail, travel, transport, utilities and hospitality but also stretching and changing the financial services as well.

This is not only threatening to wipe out small and medium businesses with uncertain cash flows but also is going to gradually weaken and over a period of time take down bigger businesses as well that don't have a data and AI core (customer acquisition, operation and retention processes in digital form and a data feedback loop to rapidly iterate and innovate in product and services) to rapidly respond to changes taking place.

In fact, the covid impact can be modelled after the KT extinction seen post the asteroid hit when non-avian dinosaurs vanished. After the asteroid hit, non-avian dinosaurs' stable food supply chain got hit, which had played a part in supporting such huge mass got disrupted, forcing mass extinction. In place of dinosaurs, mammals came out of the ground and quickly grew into the niches left by dinosaurs. This sudden expansion of species diversity into new ways of life is known as adaptive radiation. One way it occurs is in response to events that free up previously occupied environmental zones and roles, making way for many new species that adapt to these vacant living spaces. The extinction of the dinosaurs was one such major event, triggered by a black swan event, eliminating a once-dominant group of competitors while some mammals survived. But the mammals did not simply step into ecological roles vacated by the dinosaurs. So basically we owe our existence to this massive KT extinction event, (see figure below, source: https://science.sciencemag.org/content/366/6468/977 ).

There were new environmental habitats and new food resources to exploit. By the end of the Cretaceous period, flowering plants had become dominant, providing food for insects, which in turn became another high-quality food source for the mammals, along with fruits and berries. New kinds of forests appeared, offering novel habitats for what would become tree-dwelling mammals -- primates, which first appeared about 50 million years ago, and eventually, some 45 million years later, upright-walking hominids, including us. So basically we owe our existence to this massive KT extinction event.

We expect something similar to happen as well in the post covid world in the area of businesses. Covid19's massive and widespread impact has disrupted a very stable money supply chain and behaviours which allowed companies to grow massively and dominate their verticals. It has also fundamentally altered the consumer habits across the board with social distancing becoming the norm. While the growth of AI was starting to change multiple verticals by mimicking human behaviour by combining a multitude of data sets via deep learning, Covid19 has accelerated this change. AI is expected to add close to $15.7tn of new economic value (PWC research) by 2035 and because of Covid19, its adoption is getting fast-tracked. Early signs are the adoption of autonomous technologies in auto, healthcare, retail, media and manufacturing because of isolation requirements of Covid19 and corresponding massive share price increase of a few companies which have this core to adapt to these changes (See image below, source: https://www.cnbc.com/2020/06/29/tesla-stock-up-4125percent-since-ipo-ten-years-ago.html). 

 Clearly, companies, big or small, who can build the data & AI core will the ones to survive and thrive in this post-Covid world. If you are leading a company which needs help with this transformation, please feel free to reach out (Asha4ARTPARK, https://www.artpark.in/blog/contribute-your-asha4artpark), we would love to kickstart the thinking process to help you with the building of AI flywheel for your business in this post-Covid world.