Disruption in 2020: now down on the farm
Blog: Column 2 - Sandy Kemsley
I’ve been writing and presenting a lot over the past several months about the disruption that the pandemic has brought to many aspects of business, and how successful businesses are harnessing technology to respond to that disruption. In short, the ones that use the technology to become more flexible are much more likely to be coming out of this as a success.
I usually work with financial services clients on their technology strategy and execution, but this story caught my eye on how farmers are embracing Zoom calls and much more to make their operations work better. To quote the article, “the pandemic has sped up the adoption of technology in the agricultural industry as farmers spend more time with digital tools and programs and less time having face-to-face meetings”, which is exactly what’s happening in many other industries. If you thought small family farms were low-tech, think again: the farmer interviewed here uses his iPhone to monitor conditions in his fields, market his products, and track weather predictions from wherever he is. And starting this year, due to social distancing protocols, he orders his seed and supplies online, and uses Zoom to talk to experts about problems that arise during the growing season.
He thinks it’s working out well, which probably means that he’ll continue to work this way in the future. This is a theme that I’m hearing in many other types of businesses: once they’ve had to use technology and reorganize their business to accommodate the current disruption, they’re probably not going back to the old way of doing things.
There is definitely a big lesson here for businesses of any size: failure to innovate is going to cause failure, period.
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