Digital Winners During the Pandemic

February 13, 2022

Read The Full Prompt

Digital technologies were already upending many industries and companies before the pandemic. Covid-19 has accelerated those trends. Think about the impact of Door Dash or Uber Eats on the ability of restaurants to add delivery, or Shopify’s and Amazon’s impact on the ability of retail stores to develop a new channel when customers stopped visiting malls. Or think about someone like Zoom, who had an existing niche service and pivoted to scale it quickly so it could address a common issue that many businesses faced during the pandemic.

For this assignment please identify companies/organizations that you think are using digital technology to win during the Covid-19 pandemic. Please focus on just one organization, and not an entire category of organizations, entrants, or firms. Tell us why they are a winner in this environment. If it is useful for illustrating or explaining their winning approach, you may also refer to losing organizations, entrants, or firms, but these should not be the central feature of the post.

Please place most of the emphasis on how the organization creates value using digital processes and/or services in the short run. You also should summarize how it captures value, but place most of the emphasis on creation. Finally, you may allude to how it is positioned to create and capture value as the pandemic declines. Again, why do these products, services, actions, and strategies lead you to call them a winner or loser?

750 words max

 

Assignment

Create an approximately 750-word post. Make your contribution by 6 p.m. on February 13.

Please use graphics, data, videos, and links to other sites to corroborate your points. These additional links do not count against your word limit.

Please also comment on three other posts. Comments are due by 9a.m on February 14.

Selected posts will be discussed in class. Please prepare a 2-3 min summary of your blog post before class.

Submitted (14)

Discord – Your Place to Talk
Maxwell
Last modified on February 13, 2022 at 4:14 pm
Discord won during the pandemic by transforming from a niche-service for gamers to chat about multi-player online games, to becoming YOUR place to talk.
TikTok but the Party Don’t Stop, No
Snigdha Shahi
Posted on February 13, 2022 at 1:46 pm
TikTok, the real winner of the pandemic - aligning user needs, business strategy, and phenomenal growth
Laying A New Foundation and Redefining “Smart” Real Estate
Heili P
Posted on February 12, 2022 at 4:40 pm
Laying a new foundation: how one company is redefining "smart" real estate.
Duolingo: Disrupting the Language Learning Industry
Daniel Yue
Last modified on February 12, 2022 at 7:49 pm
Duolingo was a winner of the Covid-19 Pandemic -- read on to learn how.
H-E-B: Here Everything’s Better
Sutton G
Posted on February 13, 2022 at 4:03 pm
Unlocking value by re-approaching the way an app is built
How Pandora, the jewelry retailer, managed to “win” during the pandemic.
Alan Tebuev
Posted on February 13, 2022 at 5:23 pm
Assessing Pandora's use of digital technology to drive business success during the pandemic.
Skillshare: inspiring discovery through creativity
Sebastiano Sorbello
Last modified on February 12, 2022 at 11:46 pm
Skillshare is the e-learning platform that fosters your creativity, whether your objective is advancing your career or learning new hobbies
Enabling the World of Digital Work: ServiceNow
Alex Faust
Posted on February 13, 2022 at 10:49 am
ServiceNow succeeded in Covid-19 by helping other companies digitize their workflows.
Strava: Doubling Down on Community
Julia Paolillo
Last modified on February 13, 2022 at 5:35 pm
Downloads of the activity tracking app more than doubled from 4.8 million in Q1 2020 to 9.81 in Q2 - how did they do it?
Ding Dong Mai Cai: The Survivor of Pandemic
Serrino
Last modified on February 13, 2022 at 5:53 pm
The pandemic boosted grocery deliver, see how this nobody-before grocery deliver APP took the advantage and defeat China largest online platform, Hema fresh of Alibaba.
Zooming into the future
Adela Jamal
Last modified on February 12, 2022 at 1:02 pm
If you haven’t been living under a rock for the last 24 months, you probably know about Zoom and have used it multiple times. It may have been for school, work, family gatherings, awkward birthday parties where you aren’t sure [...]
The Rocket Doctor will See You
Kevin L
Last modified on February 13, 2022 at 5:33 pm
In a crowded virtual healthcare space, how is this start-up is differentiating itself from the rest?
VITALTECH: BRINGING SENIOR CARE INTO THE DIGITAL AGE
Stephen Barber
Last modified on February 14, 2022 at 12:52 am
VitalTech was a winner in the healthcare industry as it made an aggressive move into eldercare, offering its platform to senior living and long-term care facilities free of charge for 90 days during the pandemic, helping to make technology accessible [...]
Freelancer
Adela Jamal
Posted on March 6, 2022 at 3:42 pm
Flexibility is the future.