Prior to the COVID-19 pandemic, businesses were already operating in what can be described as a VUCA environment—volatile, uncertain, chaotic and ambiguous. COVID-19 has magnified the level of uncertainty across nearly all business sectors, and especially those that are customer facing: airline, entertainment, retail, food, education, museums etc.
Many businesses have not survived the first wave of the pandemic and many more will very likely not survive the next wave of COVID-19 infection. The lockdowns experienced from March to June in many parts of the world were a drastic measure imposed to block the routes of COVID-19 transmission. Some countries were sufficiently disciplined to literally stamp out the spread of COVID-19. And, in general, due to the tough mitigation measures and public compliance with COVID-19 precautions, COVID-19 positive cases fell to low levels in most regions and hospitalization levels also dropped dramatically.