What Announcements Caught Your Eye this Year?
When we began 2020, there was an inkling of things going awry as early warning signs about COVID-19 emerged. In January, most of us had our all-hands meetings and our sales team kick-offs and went merrily along. By February, the radar was up, and by March, the world fell apart.
I remember being in London, arriving late on a Sunday night, only to wake up the next morning to an article in the FT about 150 cases of COVID-19 breaking out in Italy. As I read the paper, coffee in hand, I said to my husband: “Get ready. Here we go…”
By Friday of that week, cases in the UK were beginning to emerge due to holiday skiers coming back from school break — the northern Alps their destination — only to bring coronavirus back to the UK. We couldn’t fly home fast enough. The pandemic was heading west, crossing the pond to NY and then ultimately to CA, WA, and so many other places, where it was probably coming from the other direction anyway. Suddenly the world was on fire and the great meltdown began.
Digital events emerged overnight. Distance learning took hold. The work world discovered the beauty of Zoom and working virtually. New stressors emerged, like equipping team members to work from home, recognizing that some had spaces that aren’t conducive to this work setup, or worse, two parents both working from home with young kids requiring schooling or watching or both.
But we’ve managed. We’ve adapted. We’ve shown resiliency. We woke up to December with a vaccine in our sights, the prospect of traveling again a dim reality, and the notion that we got through this year if we were lucky enough to keep our businesses and, most of all, our families and colleagues healthy.
So much has happened this year against the backdrop of the pandemic. We’ve seen major mergers announced, like S&P Global and IHS Markit, while 39 publishers in scholarly communications dropped their paywalls in response to a call to action by the Wellcome Trust. Refinitiv, Bloomberg LP, S&P Global, and FactSet all launched ESG products to help investors derive returns from sustainable investing. Apple and Google stopped X-Mode from collecting location data from users’ phones, and lawsuits were filed this week by the FTC and 46 states, finally waking up to Facebook and the growing unease with its unfettered power. It’s so heartening to see our institutions finally doing the right thing.
And ironically, China has come full circle, remaining the only major economy to register growth this year. Closer to home, the Frankfurt Book Fair was on again, off again, and ultimately held digital-only. It remains to be seen whether it will be missed and if it will ever recover as the go-to event for the industry.
The year has been full of major changes, these being but a few. We are now writing our year-end analysis about the most significant industry events that happened this year. Tell me what you think is most significant about the companies that have shaken up 2020, driving important lessons for 2021.
I’m looking forward to hearing from you. Please get in touch.