Research & Insights

New research from King's College London: only 16.7% of Covid patients held potent antibodies past 65 days. If the findings hold, the virus behaves more like the common cold than chickenpox, and any vaccine may offer only a short window of protection. The implication for business leaders is blunt, duck-and-cover strategies will fail. The job isn't to wait out the virus. It's to build a business that thrives alongside it.

When revenue contracts, the default reflex is layoffs. But research from Harvard Business Review and the BCG Henderson Institute tells a different story: companies that prepared, tightened operations, protected cash, and invested for growth outperformed their peers by double digits coming out of the Great Recession, often without resorting to cuts. Here are the four strategies, and why cutting staff belongs last in the leadership toolkit, not first.

Every leader talks about learning. Almost no one talks about unlearning — the willingness to stop doing what used to work but doesn't anymore. Two research studies from 2007 and 2016 spell out why unlearning is the capability that turns upheaval into creative destruction. Post-COVID gave every business a once-in-a-generation chance to see itself freshly. The real question: what are you ready to let go of?

Why did it take a pandemic to make remote work mainstream? Before COVID-19, remote work had grown 91% in a decade and 80-90% of US workers wanted it — yet only 3-16% actually did it on any given day. The barriers weren't technological. They were habit, managerial distrust, and quiet assumptions about what productive work looks like. The companies that use this moment to examine those assumptions will emerge stronger than they went in.

When the COVID-19 pandemic sent more than a quarter of the US population into shelter-in-place orders, businesses and employees had to adjust to a new normal overnight. People embraced remote technology to conduct their business, educate their children, and nurture their spiritual life. In one week alone, Facebook recorded a 70% surge in video calls hosted on its platform. Among the many lessons being learned was the importance of sustained social connection. Social bonds mat