History has shown that crisis inspires innovation. During the COVID-19 pandemic, innovation has been critical to keeping many people’s lives and workplaces functioning safely. Dining out at restaurants has been replaced by meal and grocery delivery services, meetings are held via video conferencing, and health care visits are occurring on our screens. But entrepreneurs also have to face the challenges of our new reality, including a global economic crisis. Christy Wyskiel, Senior Advisor to the President of Johns Hopkins University for Innovation and Entrepreneurship and Executive Director of Johns Hopkins Technology Ventures, joined Samuel Volkin to discuss impacts of the COVID-19 pandemic on innovation.
Volkin: What is the role of entrepreneurship and innovation during the COVID-19 pandemic?
Wyskiel: The essence of entrepreneurship is identifying an unmet need and moving as fast as possible to get a meaningful product to market. This is exactly what society needs during crisis situations like the COVID-19 pandemic.
If there is a silver lining to the pandemic, it’s that we’re seeing accelerated collaboration in a productive manner. Rather than waiting for every development detail to line up or for a grant to come in, innovators are coming together and offering their unique skills in unique collaborations.
This pandemic has propelled collaboration in service of society. Companies with extensive libraries of drugs are rapidly innovating, scientists who haven’t historically worked together now are forging research efforts, and thought leaders are sharing ideas across fields.
What type of COVID-19 response have we seen from startups?
Startups are working on things as varied as new personal protective equipment (PPE), vaccine technology, and ways to test and trace the spread of the virus. Several Johns Hopkins startups stand out as having scaled or pivoted to meet these needs.
One of those companies is emocha Mobile Health, which for years has been working on a mobile application for disease surveillance. Over time they have tracked tuberculosis and addiction, as well as medication adherence. The Johns Hopkins Health System is now using emocha to track COVID-19 symptoms of their 7,500 doctors, nurses, and staff to determine whether they are safe to come to work. Emocha happened to be the perfectly suited solution for this scenario, and it is now being used more broadly because of the newly identified need.