Pre-crisis, the top 10 percent of enterprise leaders that had invested in technology and digital transformation outperformed the lowest 25 percent by more than 2x on a revenue basis. That gap has now grown to 5X.

Innovation leaders were able to adjust supply chains faster, reimagine buying models with agility, and maintain productivity of workforces, customers and partners more effectively.

Three areas of innovation were accelerated by the pandemic – all centered around data sharing.

Negative COVID tests. Onboarding. Trade finance. Our manual, paper-based methods of proving identity and establishing trusted transactions are not suited for today’s needs. Innovation around decentralized digital identity is accelerating to meet the evolving requirements of our digital world.

From toilet paper to hand sanitizer, test kits to vaccines—the opportunity to efficiently coordinate information, assets, and personnel across multiple parties could enable our complex supply networks to more nimbly respond to changing supply and demand.

The rapid deployment of money to individuals and small businesses in need relies on cumbersome process, leaving many without relief. Improving access, management and movement of money is a key priority.

The solution to these issues is a more direct and transparent data-sharing model that allows all stakeholders to see, agree, and act on assets and information in real time. Gone are the days of manually passing siloed data back and forth.

The right technologies for collaboration

Through a combination of blockchain, tokenization, and other technologies, multiparty systems can provide a single source of truth into data (not a copy of the data—the actual data itself—and its activity history).

Using data in new ways

Each piece of data effectively becomes a unique digital object that can’t be copied, moved, changed or “spent” without the collective consent of the ecosystem—it can also be encoded with rules about how it should be used and by whom.

Data sharing: The common denominator

This alleviates many concerns around security, privacy, and control, leading to greater trust and sharing among individuals, corporations, supply chain partners, etc.

Redefining “essential” through collaboration

This makes it possible to use data in new ways to reinvent processes and create new products and services.

The opportunity is to redefine how everything works while securing business as usual through enhanced ecosystem collaboration and data sharing.

Steps to take now:

• Focus on solutions and experimentation around the most disrupted processes.
• See where you can reduce friction in data sharing and enhance accuracy across your networks.

Steps to take next:

• Develop short- and long-term strategic frameworks for innovation and experimentation, including improved data sharing across your ecosystem to create more value for your customers.
• Avoid simply replacing legacy processes and making incremental changes—instead, reimagine and restructure processes to align with the four new realities.
• Create processes for continuous evaluation of business strategy and innovation investments to prepare for future disruption, including reinventing for market and customer changes.
• Continually calibrate governance and incentive models across your ecosystem partners, understanding that different stakeholders are likely pursuing different use cases and value propositions as part of the same ecosystem.