Post Corona

Scott Galloway has served as professor of marketing at New York University's School of Business for 19 years. He is also a serial entrepreneur, founding nine companies and counting, including Prophet, Section4, Red Envelope, and L2. He is the author of several books including The Four and The Algebra of Happiness. Scott Galloway currently serves on the board of directors of The NewYork Times, GatewayComputers, and Eddie Bauer. His podcasts Prof G and Pivot, his blog No Mercy / No Malice, and his Prof G YouTube channel reach millions. He is a graduate of the University of California, Los Angeles and the University of California, Berkeley.

How will the Corona pandemic reshape the business environment of the next few years?

While some details are still hazy, two points are already abundantly clear about the pandemic:

Specifically, the Corona pandemic will power five overarching business trends:

1. Pandemic Trend #1 — The strong will get stronger. Despite Covid, capital markets have performed strongly in 2020. There will be an inevitable culling of weaker companies during the pandemic, but post-Covid today's biggest companies will continue to go from strength to strength. The strongest companies will keep getting stronger.

2. Pandemic Trend #2 — The "Big 4" tech firms will dominate. Even in a pandemic, there are four big tech firms which have done exceptionally well — Amazon, Apple, Facebook, and Google. These "Big 4", along with Microsoft — which currently make up 21% of the market value of all publicly traded U.S. companies — will turn the pandemic into an opportunity to get bigger, stronger, and even more dominant in the future. Don't bet against them.

3. Pandemic Trend #3 — Industry disruptions will happen. Pre-pandemic, many industries generated unearned margins — dramatic increases in price with no accompanying increase in value or innovation. Those industries have now become ripe for disruption as a result of the pandemic. Look for many more industry disruptions to happen post-pandemic.

4. Pandemic Trend #4 — Higher education will change quickly ............. Higher education is ripe for disruption, and it looks like Covid-19 will bring about permanent changes for the better. A major reconfiguration of the $600-billion-a-year higher education industry is already happening, and most of the radical changes the pandemic forced will become permanent changes for the better.

5. Pandemic trend #5 — Politics will undergo a renewal and refresh ........... Over the past forty years, government institutions have been weakened, and individualism has been prized above all. The pandemic has exposed the folly of that path. Look for a wholesale renewal of a sense of community, and for government to again be seen as a respectable necessity. Look also for a sense of collective sacrifice to again come center stage.

1. The Corona pandemic will accelerate trends that are all ready underway in the economy. It has already helped us pack ten years worth of growth into 12 months, and there's much more to come.
2. Industry disruptions and failures are inevitable, but they have always been the price of progress. Look for the post-pandemic economy to boom.

The pandemic's most enduring impact will be as an accelerant. In any crisis, there is opportunity; the greater and more disruptive the crisis, the greater the opportunities." -- Scott Galloway

Politics, recriminations, and hyperbole aside, what will be the long-term business implications of COVID-19? Famed NYU business professor Scott Galloway makes the point Corona has generated 10-years worth of growth in digital economies within the last year. He suggests the biggest impact of the pandemic won't be the short-term hits caused by lockdowns and such. Instead, Galloway forecasts the pandemic will be an accelerant, and it will end up generating far more new business opportunities than it destroys.

I think he may be right. Let me give you a personal example. For the past five years, a friend (who is a doctor) and I have been trying to set up a virtual doctor business, offering patient consultations via smartphones. Others have done this, but we have some unique twists that would be great. However, the medical practices authorities point-blank refused to let us get an operating license, because "online consultations are inferior to in-person consultations". We'd been trying to get this approved for years without them budging an inch.

Then COVID came along, and in one weekend, they completely reversed their position. All of a sudden, virtual consultations were not only superior to in-person consultations, they were preferred. Writing a prescription without seeing a person in the flesh was suddenly, and with the stroke of a pen, approved. They agreed to everything we'd been trying to get for years, without success.

That's just one small example. Multiply that the length and breadth of the economy, and you start to get a sense of what changes a pandemic may end up generating for businesspeople. Highly recommend this week's book, Post Corona. It's thought provoking. Will it get everything right? We'll see.