During the past few months, what we thought was going to be a small flu actually frozen completely our entire global human activity. Experts are talking about a 0.4 percent drop in economic growth amounts to almost 3.5 trillion U.S. dollars in lost economic output.

(Left) Global Purchasing Manager Index (PMI) for manufacturing and new export orders from April 2017 to April 2020. (Right) Global GDP and USA GDP loss. Sources: https://www.statista.com/topics/6139/covid-19-impact-on-the-global-economy/#dossierSummary__chapter3

Digital transformation, at Wartime speed

Due to the global lockdown, people simply stopped buying things overnight and this has massively accelerated the usage of eCommerce, food delivery, streaming, and other contactless services. In fact, COVID19 catalyzed the long-awaited digital transformation experts and tech innovators were talking about for decades.

The global pandemic leaves us frozen in place, it’s impossible to imagine a future that resembles the past.

Most of the traditional companies which were not prepared for these changes have already bankrupted or will take a severe hit.

This is the first time since the cold war that technology and its adoption have to evolve tremendously to enable our society to cope with such environmental challenges.

Welcome to the new, Adaptive world.

The world will need more productivity after the pandemic. Complete digitalization and automation of the economy is the only way to get it.

There will be no return to normalcy. Instead, we’ll need to create a new reality where social distancing & temperature checks will be the new normal, remote working, remote shopping, remote living and contactless-everything to the fear to be prepared for a new pandemic.

The post-coronavirus dilemma looks like the old one, but worse. The world will need more productivity, and automation is a way to get it.

But what will happen to displaced, less-skilled workers? The pandemic could reduce working hours by 6.7 percent across the world, equivalent to 195 million full-time workers, according to the International Labour Organisation. For now, governments are offering wage subsidies to businesses to retain employees. The onus will eventually also fall on companies to re-skill and accommodate their workers.

In 2020, we are starting a new decade grounded in values of adaptivity and resilience to possible new environmental changes to come: we re-enter the physical world with a new perspective.

To be grounded at home the past few months has underscored the importance of individual contribution — first to flatten the curve by staying home, second to navigate the new normal with resilience, and third now to build a new future post-pandemic:

“Digitalization of every sector, being the only way of living as a social distant society, will dictate our lives.”

As shops, cities, roads, boundaries, are re-opening, we now need to rebuild our infrastructures, re-build our institutions, re-build our daily products, processes and ultimately re-think new possibilities for both work and life to be resilient, adaptive to prevent the impact of new possible new pandemics but also climate change and other risks that threaten our world.

Digitalization, Decentralization, Automation, and self-sustainability will be the hashtags of the world bein build the decade ahead.

So, who are the adaptive talents, creators, founders, and forgers who will build the new world post-pandemic?

Adaptive talents, the builders of the New World.

With the proliferation of digital entrepreneurs, digital tools for product creators, and new freelancing networks providing unlimited global labor a click away, the builders who will thrive in the new world will not only ‘think different’, but think “adaptive” to build resilient, crisis-proof, sustainable.

Adaptive talent will drive the new world economy to be more resilient, crisis-proof, and sustainable. Photo credit: Toronto, Canada, by Bluesky.

We will need new leaders to build this new world.

Here are the 7 types of builders we have identified who will thrive in the new world:

• The Designers who Code

• The Industry Jumpers (crossing traditional and digital industries)

• The Digital Advisors helping corporate digital transformation

• The Creative curious who became self-taught Hackers

• The Academics who became Startup Accelerator manager

• The Community Builders who became an influencer

• The Star Wars Fan that became CEO

Interested to discover more examples of these archetypes? You want to understand how and why these archetypes will be winning the new world economy?

Stay tuned and register to receive an invitation to our Ask Me Anything Series “The Archetypes of Adaptive talents who will thrive in the New World”.