8
LOCKDOWN Issue 2020
T
extbook answers and business clichés ring hollow when workers and company owners are left aghast at the scenes unfolding. How should local business respond? The panorama of the pandemic might not be as bleak as you imagined and, as poet Alexander Pope wrote, hope springs eternal in the human breast. This was the upshot of the first Virtual Vega Talks, hosted in collaboration with KZN INVEST and moderated by Durban Vega campus navigator, Naretha Pretorius. Panellists Ian Gourley and Wendy Mahoney considered the issues and hinged their presentations around innovation. Mahoney heads up consulting group Newmella Holdings, and Gourley is the Group Creative Director at Barrows, a global retail company headquartered in Durban. The incentive to innovate, Gourley said, was survival. Most businesses faced with the threat of closure battened down the hatches and regrouped. The crisis forced many companies to do what they ought to do routinely: clearly articulate their challenges. Innovation, he added, was a process framed by hope. “Imagining our future lifts us up ... it outlines the change that we can become and it inspires us. Hope is an elixir that helps us press on.” Gourley said businesses could draw strength from inspirational leaders like South African President Cyril Ramaphosa and New York Governor Andrew Cuomo, both of whom inspired confidence and provided thought leadership and clarity. Reimagining was fundamental to innovation
V E G A TA L K S
Why are you in business AT ALL? If there was ever a time for mindful business, now is the time. KZN companies, like firms around the world, are reeling in response to the lockdown and global economic contraction. They will do well to remember that good people and good companies are ennobled by a challenge
and required expansive thinking, Gourley said. He quoted Cuomo who said he was tired of being asked what New York was going to look like when “things get back to normal”. “Cuomo said we will
never return to the past. We will never turn back. We have to reimagine everything: travel, communication, all sorts of engagement.” Tragedies like the pandemic and the 911 disaster often had the
