Innovation gaps between the real world and the virtual world in the time of quarantine – Board of Innovation
The lack of real use cases, the overpriced hardware or misaligned expectations can all be named as reasons why AR/VR still hasn’t found any traction in our professional lives.
The only innovations that are accelerating close to this field are new creative blended video experiences. Video conferencing tools are evolving. Look how Miro is integrating video in dynamic interactive boards, or how mmhmm.app offers mixed video feeds that are normally limited to advanced professional tools.
But this doesn’t mean the AR/VR hype train can be stopped. There is always another thing on the horizon that will suddenly kick off everything. Apple’s heavily anticipated AR goggles are almost here!
In short: No, don’t expect any significant impact in the 5 years ahead. And let’s assume that by that time nobody talks about COVID anymore either.
On top of that, a digital concert remains a luxury. People can live without this for a long time. But people need food, medical care and many other necessities. So the (digital) innovations and experiments are far more common in those areas.
Many regions closed schools for a limited amount of time but luckily most experts in different countries realized that closing schools for younger kids is less critical to fight the pandemic. So for kids and youngsters below 18 years old, it’s expected that schools will continue to operate close to normal, assuming extra security precautions are followed. But as a result, there is no big market to develop new homeschooling solutions.
In the early days of the pandemic, we spotted some wild predictions about how airline travel would be redesigned. But it only took a couple of weeks for most airlines to return back to a “normal” service model. Some dropped already free middle seats, no more disinfecting between each flight,..etc. In order to be profitable, planes need to be packed as full as possible. So airlines are switching their strategy to pay for your funeral if needed or just a lot of communication that planes are the safest spot to stay in your whole travel journey.
While private travel might rebound to pre-COVID19 levels at some point, we do anticipate that business travel will take a really long time to get back to pre-pandemic levels. Most businesses need to cut costs and “travel budgets” often are cut first. In the meantime, literally all industries have adopted a new etiquette and expectations towards remote (from home) interactions. So not all business meetings will switch back to the good old times of 2 days of traveling for a 2h meeting.