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See discussions, stats, and author profiles for this publication at: https://www.researchgate.net/publication/341812794Using design thinking to respond to crises: B2B lessons from the 2020 COVID-19 pandemicArticle in Industrial Marketing Management · July 2020DOI: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2020.05.030CITATIONS7READS9352 authors:Pinar CankurtaranDelft University of Technology3 PUBLICATIONS 202 CITATIONSSEE PROFILEMichael BeverlandUniversity of Sussex154 PUBLICATIONS 5,750 CITATIONSSEE PROFILEAll content following this page was uploaded by Michael Beverland on 15 June 2020.The user has requested enhancement of the downloaded file.Contents lists available at ScienceDirectIndustrial Marketing Managementjournal homepage: www.elsevier.com/locate/indmarmanUsing design thinking to respond to crises: B2B lessons from the 2020COVID-19 pandemicPinar Cankurtarana, Michael B. Beverlandb,⁎a Faculty of Industrial Design Engineering, Delft University of Technology, Landbergstraat 15, Delft 2628CE, the Netherlandsb Strategy & Marketing, University of Sussex Business School, Jubilee Building, Falmer BN1 9SL, United KingdomA R T I C L E I N F OKeywords:Design thinkingWicked problemsCrisis managementB2BInnovationA B S T R A C TWe examine the value of design thinking in times of crisis. Drawing on examples of firm innovations during the2020 Covid-19 lockdown, we propose that disruptive events represent wicked problems that require managers tobreak out of established patterns of thinking. Design thinking, or the problem solving approaches and tools ofdesigners, represents one such approach. Drawing on extant research, we identify a three-stage process of designthinking: disrupt, develop and deliver, and transform. We examine each stage, identifying how careful disruptivethinking with a focus on understanding problems within their context can give rise to innovative solutions,resulting in a more resilient organisation.1. IntroductionAs they entered into the second decade of the 21st century, few, ifany, industrial marketers would have imagined that by March 2020,many of their markets would have disappeared, with supply chains andtrade severely disrupted. For business-to-business (B2B) marketers, thesubsequent lockdown by governments around the world resulted in analmost immediate loss of markets, as rapid collapse in consumer demand ensured the bull-whip effect quickly took hold within supplychains (Hufford & Tita, 2020; Lee, Padmanabhan, & Whang, 1997). Thephrase “in these crazy times” entered into common business usage,reflecting a ‘new normal’ characterized by heightened uncertainty.Furthermore, it was not clear if, and when, normal business would return, as many upstream clients may not survive the Covid-19 lockdownperiod.Given the likelihood of reoccurrence due to new viruses and/ormutations, and the high possibility of calamitous environmental eventsarising from climate change, what tools can B2B marketers use whenthese situations occur? In this article, we draw on research on designthinking (Luotola, Hellström, Gustafsson, & Perminova-Harikoski,2017), or the problem solving method and tools used by designers todeal with wicked problems (Brown, 2008). Why design thinking? Withmany nations making reference to ‘wartime conditions’ (FinancialTimes, 2020), we believe that design thinking, with its emphasis ondisruption, abductive thinking, and reframing, offers insights for thenecessary pivot (Reis, 2011) that many B2B firms will have to undergoto survive, and potentially, emerge stronger (Beverland, Wilner, &Micheli, 2015).We only need to examine the rapid adjustment of some unlikely B2Cfirms to further support the merits of design thinking in responding tocrisis situations. At the end of 2019, who would have thought that, in afew months, some of the biggest names in consumer luxury would havequickly shifted their famed ateliers away from crafting delicate perfumes, fine wines, and beautiful clothes, to supplying hand sanitiser andpersonal protective equipment (PPE) to stretched frontline medicalstaff? Yet this is precisely what LVMH, Burberry, Brooks Brothers, theMiroglio Group, Coty, Zara and many others did. Struggling airlinessuch as Delta and Jetblue have been offering free flights to medicalprofessionals to ferry them quickly to hotspots across the United States,building new networks involving local governments and non-profitorganisations such as American Red Cross and Doctors Without Borders(Puhak, 2020). Even McDonalds shared the secrets of its sausage andegg McMuffin recipe to retain brand connections with loyal users whowere unable to venture out and get their favourite sandwich(Hardiman, 2020). The speed at which these organisations used theircapabilities to pivot to a new reality was remarkable, and offers lessonsfor B2B marketers when the next crisis inevitably strikes.2. Design thinking & wicked problemsDesign thinking is an umbrella term encompassing the logics,practices and tools of design (Micheli, Wilner, Bhatti, Mura, &https://doi.org/10.1016/j.indmarman.2020.05.030Received 1 May 2020; Received in revised form 23 May 2020⁎ Corresponding author.E-mail addresses: p.cankurtaran@tudelft.nl (P. Cankurtaran), m.beverland@sussex.ac.uk (M.B. Beverland).Industrial Marketing Management 88 (2020) 255–260Available online 01 June 20200019-8501/ © 2020 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.TBeverland, 2019). The term ‘design thinking’ was first used by HerbertSimon (1969) in his seminal The Sciences of the Artificial, to refer to theunique mental tools used by designers to solve problems. The termgained greater momentum when CEO of design-consultancy IDEO, TimBrown, formalized his firm’s approach to strategy in a 2008 HarvardBusiness Review article and subsequent book. For Brown (2008), designthinking was something any manager could engage in:“Design thinking uses the designer’s sensibility and methods tomatch people’s needs with what is technologically feasible and what aviable business strategy can convert into customer value and marketopportunity” (Brown, 2008, p. 86).In essence, design thinking was the design discipline’s pitch to Csuite (Nussbaum, 2011), where design moved out of its functional siloto provide new ways of approaching core strategic challenges and organizing (Micheli, Perks, & Beverland, 2018). In a major conceptualreview, Micheli et al. (2019) define the key attributes of design thinkingas follows: creativity and innovation, user-centeredness and involvement, problem solving, iteration and experimentation, interdisciplinarycollaboration, ability to visualize, gestalt view, abductive reasoning,tolerance of ambiguity and failure, and blending analysis and intuition.Supported by the use of design thinking tools and methods such asbrainstorming, prototyping and ethnographic methods, these attributesare believed to be especially valuable for addressing the type of wickedproblem that Covid-19 represents (Beverland et al., 2015).For businesses, the challenges brought about by the Covid-19 pandemic are novel, multifaceted and interdependent:“CEOs must rethink their routes to market as channel partners eitheradjust quickly or fail fast. They need to modify their supply chains ascritical components are ‘cut off.’ They must rebuild their offshore customer care centers” (Allen, 2020).Maintaining the continuity of business activities amidst the disruption caused by the epidemic represents a “wicked problem”, whichHorst Rittell defines as “a class of social system problems which are illformulated, where the information is confusing, where there are manyclients and decision makers with conflicting values, and where the ramifications in the whole system are thoroughly confusing.” (cited inChurchman, 1967, p. 141). Wicked problems have ten defining characteristics (Rittel & Webber, 1973), which we present in Table 1 withexamples of B2B challenges arising from Covid-19. In summary, howbest to respond to the effects of Covid-19 for business is not obvious.The nature of the problems facing B2B marketers shifts, with governments changing the rules of the lockdown on a daily basis, often inresponse to new data that cast doubts over the key assumptions heldjust a few days earlier.Key practices such as JIT supply chains can no longer be supportedin an environment with major disruptions to transportation and warehousing (Maidenberg, 2020). When lockdown conditions do ease, it isunclear what the ‘new normal’ will be, with many markets such as airtravel potentially taking years to recover. Airbus for example haswarned that even with travel restrictions removed, passengers may beunwilling to fly in cramped environments with little social distancing,possibly extending the industry recovery period (which was healthyprior to the crisis) to five years and requiring major redesigns to aircraft(on top of the shift to carbon neutrality required of the industry byregulators) (Jolly, 2020). Fragile sectors such as publishing, alreadystruggling due to the disruption of social media, have seen an almosttotal decline in advertising revenue, leading many, such as New Zealand’s Bauer Media to shut down titles such as the Listener and North andSouth, leaving the nation without significant local content providers(Australian Associated Press, 2020).3. Implications for B2B marketers during crisisGiven the novelty, complexity and magnitude of the crisis, organisations are forced to think beyond tried-and-tested ways of thinking anddoing. Designers “conceive and plan what does not yet exist”(Buchanan, 1992, p. 18), making design thinking a particularly wellsuited way for organisations to address the complex challenges in thebroader business environment (Kolko, 2015) and solve wicked problems (von Thienen, Meinel, & Nicolai, 2014). The second author’sprevious research into the benefits of design thinking in addressingwicked branding problems (Beverland et al., 2015), identified a threestage innovation process: (1) disrupt, (2) define and develop, and (3)transform (see Fig. 1). We propose that this process can be used by B2Bfirms in their handling of crises. We illustrate this with examples of firmresponses to the 2020 Covid-19 crisis.3.1. DisruptWicked problems cannot be solved with an extension of the samedominant logic used in times of greater certainty and stability.However, stepping outside of tried-and-true logics is difficult for managers. Previous research has identified three interconnected practicesinvolved in disruption: naïve questioning, problem interrogation, andcontextual immersion (Beverland et al., 2015). We explore these inmore detail below.Table 1Covid-19, Wicked problems and B2B challenges.Characteristics of wicked problems (Rittel & Webber, 1973) Covid-19 pandemic as experienced by B2B marketers1. There is no definitive formulation of a wicked problem. Market demand collapses; no clear idea of future viability of customer and supplybase.2. Wicked problems have no stopping rule. No clear path out of lock down; lack of clear timeline to ‘normalcy’.3. Solutions to wicked problems are not true-or-false, but better or worse. Solutions need to “make do”; they must focus on survival somehow, and applyresources to address every shifting requirement.4. There is no immediate and no ultimate test of a solution to a wicked problem. Normal time-to-market disrupted by immediate need.5. Every solution to a wicked problem is a “one-shot operation”; because there is noopportunity to learn by trial-and-error, every attempt counts significantly.Failure can potentially cost lives and waste precious time.6. Wicked problems do not have an enumerable (or an exhaustively describable) set ofpotential solutions, nor is there a well-described set of permissible operations thatmay be incorporated into the plan.Solutions involve combinations of resources that may be novel; solutions will require‘off-script’ approaches that temporarily park taken for granted assumptions andoperational shibboleths.7. Every wicked problem is essentially unique. Future challenges may take different forms, have different timelines, and impacts.8. Every wicked problem can be considered to be a symptom of another problem. Derived demand collapses; labour subject to illness and stay-at-home orders;suppliers of resources may collapse or face difficulties; transport of inputs severelydisrupted.9. The existence of a discrepancy representing a wicked problem can be explained innumerous ways. The choice of explanation determines the nature of the problem’sresolution.Evolving government responses shift with updates in data, explanations and beliefsabout best likely approach. What was ‘correct’ yesterday may be ‘wrong’ today.10. The planner has no right to be wrong. Failure can potentially cost lives and waste precious time; impact on reputation maybe long lasting.P. Cankurtaran and M.B. Beverland Industrial Marketing Management 88 (2020) 255–260256Naïve questioning involves asking seemingly simple questions touncover existing assumptions, and help generate ideas for new alternatives. In previous research, naïve questioning was used to challengepre-existing assumptions about brands as a means of driving throughinnovations that would address critical stakeholder demands, yet initially seemed at odds with the brand’s position (Beverland et al., 2015).Examples of these questions include: “Why can’t we do the following?”,“Why can’t we meet the demands of this stakeholder / situation/challenge?” and “What could we do to respond to this situation?”. Theuse of the term ‘naïve’ is deliberate as simple questions of the typementioned help surface assumptions about ways of operating and enable one to interrogate the problem in more depth, while also helping toidentify concerns that may need to be addressed in a solution. Oneexample of this process is described below:“In mid-March, Lennon Rodgers, director of the GraingerEngineering Design Innovation Lab at the University of Wisconsin inMadison, fielded a plea from the university’s hospital to make 1,000face shields. “Initially, I didn’t take it too seriously,“ he recalled. Butafter his wife, an anaesthesiologist, told him the shields were indispensable for dealing with highly infectious patients, he scoured hardware and craft stores for parts. He teamed up with Delve, a local designfirm, and Midwest Prototyping, a contract manufacturer, to design theirown “Badger Shield. “They expected to use 3-D printers, then concludedthat wouldn’t achieve the necessary scale. They uploaded the design totheir website along with the necessary parts for anyone to download. Afew days later Ford Motor Co. did, and, with tweaks of its own, beganturning out face shields for Detroit-area hospitals.” (Ip, 2020).Naive questioning is characterised by the extensive use of abductivereasoning, defined by Martin (2009) as “the logic of what might be” (p.27). The New Zealand government for example used abductive logic todefine their Covid-19 response, working back from the worst possiblescenario of 80,000 deaths (from a population of five million) to developan early lockdown strategy that has been hailed worldwide for itssuccess (Fifield, 2020). Upon hearing about a ‘mysterious illness’ fromcrew members with families in China and receiving similar reports fromcolleagues across the globe, Weta Digital (of Lord of the Rings’ fame)began its own crisis planning well before Covid-19 was declared apandemic. The company had to challenge basic film making conventions, which, despite its reputation as a digital effects’ studio, still relyheavily on large numbers of actors, many of whom are in close physicalcontact in action scenes. Pushing the boundaries of digital production,Weta Digital was able to switch its workforce to working from home ina matter of 72 h, meet all its deadlines and even secure more projects(Hill, 2020).Traditional modes of reasoning (i.e., deductive and inductive) thatrely on proven facts and structured experience (Kolko, 2010) oftenproduce satisfactory outcomes under stable conditions. However, theyfall short of addressing the indeterminacy of wicked problems whichrequire the creation of new knowledge and insight that can be implemented into creative and innovative solutions, as the examplesabove show. To do this, organisations need to move beyond acceptingthe world as is, but “actively look for new data points, challenge accepted explanations, and infer possible new worlds” (Martin, 2009, p.65).This then leads to the next step, which is to interrogate the problem.Whereas it is common to marvel at the final design, design thinking isinitially problem focused rather than in a rush to jump to solutions(Micheli et al., 2019). Early on in the spread of Covid-19 many firmswere quick to rush to solutions, focusing on leveraging capabilities toproduce quick outcomes. Scottish based BrewDog was one example,leveraging its alcohol production facilities to produce hand sanitiser forhospitals. However, the sanitiser failed to reach the alcohol levels necessary for hospital use and production was rejected (Butler, 2020). Incontrast, in the example quoting Lennon Rogers, scalability at rapidpace, followed by distribution, was the ultimate problem (rather thanbasic manufacturing) and one that has been hampered many similarlocal productions of PPE. Lennon Rogers, as with many other marketplace actors, therefore turned to sharing platforms, which then enabledFord to leverage its scale and reach to equipment to healthcare professionals.An emphasis on understanding problems helps avoid the rush topoor solutions. Problems often emerge out of a context of stakeholderrules, decisions, and practices that must be addressed in order for solutions to be viable (Beverland et al., 2015). Contextual immersionenables design thinkers to empathise with users and buyers (e.g.,Brown, 2008). ServiceNow, who specialise in delivering digital workflows to organisations, responded to Covid-19 by introducing a customer care program with apps and resources to support client organisations in their crisis response. Key in this process was an empatheticapproach to user needs and a move towards customer-centricity moretypical of B2C marketing, as vice president Rhiannon Prothero explains:“What we did very quickly was to move to a more a more consumercentric view of empathy. B2B businesses are historically very good andvery successful at being extremely able to clearly articulate what wehave that could fix your problem. What we’ve had to pivot towards ismore like, ‘what do you need?’ So, instead of ‘here’s what we have, doyou want it?’ it’s ‘what do you need and how can we get creative withyou as a potential customer?’ or in terms of understanding how what wehave can improve your situation because we are now forced to think interms of what is your peculiar need, right now.” (Prothero, 2020).Since wartime allegories were common during the Covid-19 crisis,one example of contextual immersion from WW2 was the logic behindmuch Soviet weaponry (often adapted from Western designs). TheSoviets had large reserves of personnel and desperately needed to getthem to the front line. The Soviet Union’s formidable T34 tank wasdesigned to address this need. Not only did it provide crews withDisrupt1. Naïve ques!oning2. Problem interroga!on3. Contextual immersionDefine & Develop1. Capabili!es matching2. Problem scoping3. Solu!on DevelopmentTransform1. Mapping2. Re-stabilizingFig. 1. Three stages of design thinking.P. Cankurtaran and M.B. Beverland Industrial Marketing Management 88 (2020) 255–260257protective armour and significant firepower, it was also simple tomanufacture (resulting in thousands being ready in the key battle atKursk), and requiredlittle training in use.3.2. Define and developDisrupting results in either pivoting (changing or adding to youroffering) or reframing (putting a different emphasis on an existingoffer). This step entails taking stock of existing resources and capabilities to support disruptive solutions. Following Fig. 1 it involvescapabilities matching, problem scoping, and solution development.Capabilities matching is evident in many of the examples of firmspivoting and reframing during Covid-19. For example, chemical manufacturer Ineos promised to retool their operations within two days toensure adequate supplies of hand sanitiser (Jolly, 2020). As an exampleof reframing, furloughed British Airways staff decided to leverage theirskills in customer care by creating a lounge experience within hospitalsto serve exhausted NHS staff during breaks in lengthy (up to 72-h) shifts(Campbell, 2020). Along with many fashion brands, Burberry pivotedby retooling its Castleford factory, home of its iconic trench-coat, toquickly produce over 100,000 surgical masks, drawing on its extensivesupply chains across the globe to ensure an adequate supply of therelevant material inputs (Street, 2020). Tech giants such as Apple andTesla also drew on their existing expertise and supply lines in offeringto source and produce much needed medical equipment in the USA(Masunaga, 2020). In many instances, companies went beyond theirorganisational boundaries and pooled experience and resources in linewith the ‘interdisciplinary collaboration’ principle of design thinking(Micheli et al., 2019). Tech companies such as Microsoft and Facebookpartnered with the World Health Organization to organise #BuildforCOVID19, global a hackathon to promote the development of softwareto address Covid-19 related challenges in a wide range of areas(Mihalcik, 2020).Once capabilities have been identified, the problem needs to bescoped in order for a solution to be developed. In times of crisis, theneed for rapid pivoting or reframing often requires an emphasis onwhat we call ‘de-design’, or stripping offers down to their essentials. Forexample, it is worth thinking about how modular production andsimplicity were the hallmarks of many WW2 successes (e.g., Mulberryharbours for D-Day). De-design enabled US ship builders to quicklyproduce an almost endless supply of modular “Liberty ships”, vesselsthat could be laden with much needed supplies for the United Kingdomand the Soviet Union. The effectiveness of Germany’s U-boat blockademeant vast numbers of ships were needed to replace lost vessels, necessitating the development of designs that were quickly scalable, andable to be manufactured by the large numbers of inexperienced womenentering the workforce (Allen, 2020).Returning to New Zealand film studio Weta Digital, the problemsassociated with Covid-19 threatened to shut down production of numerous big budget titles such as Mulan, the Avatar sequels andAmazon’s forthcoming Lord of the Rings adaptation (the sector earns$NZ2 billion per year, the majority of it through Weta). Since theseproductions were currently in development, Weta’s executive team hadto find a way to film large-scale action scenes when large casts of extraswere no longer available. They also had to grapple with issues such ashow many takes of a scene featuring two actors hugging would beethical, and how to work around NZ’s strict level 4 lockdown ruleswhich had made hair and make-up, so critical for fantasy productions,forbidden. The answer lay in building a diffuse digital-based network ofskilled developers who could create digital avatars of actors and extras,ensuring that expensive productions did not go over budget and worrynervous backers in Hollywood. The ability to keep these productions onschedule meant they could be available for digital release through newplatforms such as Disney+ or available for viewing when lockdownsceased (an important consideration given the worry that the lockdownmay result in a deficiency of product) (Sacks, 2020).The wicked nature of the problems that emerged during Covid-19also meant that designers’ emphasis on iteration became an invaluabletool for responding to possible threats to national health services. Whilea consortium of high-tech manufacturers (Airbus, Rolls Royce) focusedon scaling up production of ventilators made by smaller specialists suchas Smiths Medical, local manufacturer Gtech offered a stripped backapproach. The firm made a stripped-back ventilator design open-sourceto ensure rapid production should the worse-case scenario of an overwhelmed National Health Service (NHS) emerge (a very real concerngiven the long lead times and subsequent regulatory approval challenges experienced by the likes of Dyson who had offered their services;Davies & Rankin, 2020). The design was made of standard industrialparts, many of which could be produced using 3D printing. FounderNick Grey stated:“There was a basic option in the brief and a more sophisticated oneand what we set out to do was the very basics within two weeks. If youneed us, great, if you can get something more sophisticated then that isfine as well.” (Barnett, 2020).Abductive reasoning is iterative in nature. As decision makers become exposed to new information and explore new potential explanations, they update and clarify their understanding of the problem(Beckman & Barry, 2007). This allows problem scoping, whereby theorganisation has a more concrete idea of the problem and is able to redefine it in terms of one that is narrower, and better lends itself tosolution development. Solution development involves creating alternative ways by which the problem can be addressed. This process isaided by the use of design tools such as visualising and prototyping(Liedtka, 2014) to experiment with the solutions and assess their usefulness “in draft form” (Micheli et al., 2019, p. 14). By doing so, decision makers can learn from their mistakes and feed their newly generated insights into the next iteration loop. Gtech’s design wasultimately rejected by the NHS, as the government’s shift from containment to mitigation took pressure off the health service and ultimately saw orders for ventilators scaled back and cancelled. Nonetheless, Grey’s iterative approach for a worse-case scenario also offereda solution to underfunded health systems that demanded less complexity, resulting in uptake in other countries. After having their firstbatch of hand sanitizer rejected, BrewDog worked closely with the NHSto revise the formula to meet the clinical standards, and was able todeliver the second batch to hospitals in parts of Scotland (Morrison,2020).3.3. TransformDesign thinking is transformative (Brown, 2008) in so far as it aimsto enhance a firm’s competitiveness and, in the context of crises, resilience. In their study of brand innovation, Beverland et al. (2015)identified that design thinking enabled brand managers to balance relevance with consistency, with the new design both mapping back tothe brand’s heritage and also expanding it in the minds of key users,opening up the possibility of new opportunities in the future (restabilization).For firms operating through the Covid-19 crisis, actions that reek ofauthenticity will have enduring effects on how they are perceived.BrewDog’s decision to use its idle transportation capacity to deliverschool lunches to stay at home children (in lower socio-economic areas)got widespread praise on Twitter. In late May, the company announcedthe launch of the ‘BrewDog Kickstart Collective’ which aims to assistindependent bars reopen across the UK (Little, 2020). These actions willno doubt reshape the brewer’s abrasive ‘punk’ reputation with end-usersand key channel buyers. Luxury brands leveraging their productivecapacity to produce protective equipment for medical staff will alsoenhance their reputation. These firms have an intuitive understandingthat they must step up in times of crisis precisely because they are seenas non-essential (Joy, Sherry, Venkatesh, Wang, & Chan, 2012). Firmssuch as Burberry and Brooks Brothers have an established heritage ofP. Cankurtaran and M.B. Beverland Industrial Marketing Management 88 (2020) 255–260258pivoting, having produced military uniforms since founding (WWI andthe American Civil War, respectively) (Dumcius, 2020). The actions offirms such as LVMH in producing a plain label sanitiser to be givenaway to French hospitals (Moné, 2020) will enhance their reputationacross multiple stakeholders, and potentially open up new business-tobusiness markets in times of spare capacity. A similar set of opportunities exists for Spanish fast fashion giant Zara who used its renownedagility to produce protective clothing for frontline heath workers(Reuters, 2020).For many business to business organisations, reputational effectswill be felt in key markets, institutional buyers (governments for example), and channels. Through their actions, firms such as Gtech havegained a higher profile among the general public than they enjoyedpreviously. Although they may not sell directly to consumers, oneoutcome of design thinking would be for B2B to move to B2B2C andvice versa, a possibility for professional chef uniform maker Hedley &Bennett who quickly pivoted to producing protective gear for hospitalstaff (Bennett, 2020). Colorado-based online surplus food wholesalerFoodMaven was also quick to move into the B2C sphere after sales to itsusual institutional customers collapsed with the lockdown. In keepingwith its mission of using all food with good purpose, FoodMavenlaunched a retail operation to make its inventory available to consumers and support food security in the local area (Business Wire,2020). These actions increase firm reputation for key B2B brand attributes such as adaptability (Beverland, Napoli, & Lindgreen, 2007),which will appeal to larger industrial buyers including, but not restricted to, government institutions around the globe.Crisis also offers firms more tangible opportunities. Should Zoomsolve its privacy and security issues, it may become the dominantplatform for video conferencing, for example. Weta’s aforementionedpivot, combined with the country’s success in managing Covid-19, hasglobal studio executives relooking at New Zealand as a low-risk, highquality base for large budget productions (Sacks, 2020). The leveragingof capabilities may represent the first steps into new markets for manyof the firms discussed within this article. Those of us teaching at universities will be all too aware how the sudden need to shift everythingonline enabled an outpouring of innovation and change. Commonamong many academic staff was the observation of how things deemedinstitutionally impossible in February suddenly became entirely possible and necessary in March. Sweeping away past practices and bureaucratic systems may enable faster innovation and greater appetitefor change, or at the very least, stimulate the reassessment of how necessary previous practices really were. Pharmaceutical companies forexample have fast tracked vaccine trials, in much the same way as theydid for the Ebola outbreak in 2013–4 in the Democratic Republic ofCongo (Salem, 2019).Finally, transformation will require B2B marketers to rethink established practices. A McKinsey survey among more than 3600 B2Bdecision makers suggests that this is already starting to occur, showingthat almost 90% percent of sales operations now take place digitally,with over half of the respondents regarding the new sales model to bejust as effective, if not more so, than traditional B2B sales models(Gavin, Harrison, Plotkin, Spillecke, & Stanley, 2020). Rhiannon Prothero notes that the Covid-19 crisis has been a learning experience forServiceNow, creating an appreciation for creativity and agility in theface of risk, and will have profound effects on the organisation:“Ultimately, I think it will make us better at what we do, and it’s abit of a sanity check to say ‘it’s easy to drift into this format of here’swhat we have’, whereas we should always be pulling back to ‘what doyou need and how can we help’.” (Prothero, 2020).Managing the risk and uncertainty arising from crisis situationsrequires similar shifts in mindset with respect to other fundamentalaspects of B2B marketing. For example, while make or buy decisions areessential to B2B marketing, in the context of pandemics, relying entirelyon distant global supply lines may limit a firm’s ability to respond tocrisis events. Shortages of PPE for medical staff have seen governmentsscramble to secure supplies from key producing nations. However,producing nations such as Turkey understandably placed restrictions onsuch sales to guarantee their own access to critical supplies. Somecommentators have already noted that for many de-industrializedeconomies, Covid-19 may trigger strategic re-tooling to ensure keycapabilities can be activated as and when needed. Design thinking canhelp in redesigning existing ecosystems, potentially in favour of a mixof local and global suppliers to ensure risk is adequately managed.4. ConclusionThe 2020 Covid-19 pandemic generated a number of wicked problems for industrial marketers, who were suddenly faced with a lack ofmarkets and potentially disastrous future. Wicked problems requiretools that enable decision makers to break out of preferred patterns ofthinking. Drawing on the literature, we identify a three stage process ofdesign thinking that involves disrupting previous assumptions andpractices, developing ‘good enough’ solutions, and transforming firmpractices to ensure greater future resilience. For some firms, survivingthe crisis may be the best possible outcome; however for others, enhanced reputations, forward and backward integration and new markets may result from the use of design methods and tools. Critically, the‘new normal’ will require greater attention to risk management andscenario planning, involving the deployment of design thinking rapidresponses to emergent and fluid challenges.ReferencesAllen, J. (2020, Mar 30). The coronavirus may inspire a great retooling. Bain & Company[Online]. Retrieved from https://www.bain.com/insights/coronavirus-may-inspire-agreat-retooling-fm-blog/.Australian Associated Press (2020, Apr 2). Bauer shuts New Zealand magazine operationamid coronavirus downturn. The Guardian [Online]. 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