Crisis-driven innovation skills

The COVID-19 pandemic created insolvency, layoffs and even bankruptcy for many firms. It also pushed other firms to create new products and services, significantly modify the existing ones, and optimize their processes. All this under changing regulations, inflationary pressures, market volatility, remote work, scarcity of raw materials, and supply chain disruptions, testing firms’ leaders and employees to the fullest and awakening or generating certain skills. This research explores the innovation skills acquired by firms’ leaders and employees during the pandemic. Moreover, it outlines and classifies these pandemic-driven innovation skills and differentiate the skills that are more prevalent in the service sector and in the manufacturing sector. This study is conducted via a qualitative approach based on a multiple case study involving 22 Colombian firms. The information was collected from January to May 2022 through semi-structured interviews, which were transcribed and analyzed with NVivo. The preliminary results show that the pandemic either awoke, accelerated, strengthened, or generated skills related to resiliency, adaptability, assertive communication, problem solving, and proactivity. At the research level, this study contributes to the body of literature on innovation management and innovation skills by empirically highlighting and exploring in a comprehensive way the skills generated during the pandemic; at the practical level this research provides hints for managers on the triggers and contexts where specific innovation skills can emerge.