Strategic innovation: turning crises into opportunities.

The effects of the pandemic have been devastating; has caused economic recession, social and geopolitical tensions, increased informality, market volatility and uncertainty (ANDI, 2021; IDB, 2020; Ohnsorge & Yu, 2021; World Bank, 2020).

The effect of the Covid-19 crisis, however, has not been homogeneous in all companies and sectors.

Despite this scenario of decline, some companies have been successful during the crisis, creating new products and services, retaining their employees (or even creating new jobs) and strengthening their value proposition.

While some winning firms belong to sectors that organically benefited from the pandemic (for example, e-commerce), others belong to sectors traditionally affected by it, such as entertainment, culture, platitudes, restaurants, among others.

We call these latter companies "outliers" because they appear to be performing well while their peers in the same sector are sliding into losses.

Some of these outliers have reinvented and innovated at the service, product, process or organizational level to stay afloat, gain resilience and remain competitive.

This study intends to explore the strategic decisions and actions at the innovation level implemented by companies to prosper, succeed and transform during crises.

We want to identify the secret sauce for the success of these transformations, with emphasis on Colombian firms.

This research aims to provide elements to answer the question: What strategic decisions and actions at the level of innovation have led companies to remain competitive during a crisis?

To answer this question, we will frame our findings within the literature of ten types of innovation and conduct interviews and semi-structured surveys in Colombian companies.

Innovation, strategic innovation, crisis, pandemic, interviews, survey.