Silver linings

Never before has so much changed so quickly and dramatically. But from crisis comes innovation. Alison Boleyn outlines the 20 things that may never be the same again in work, technology and leadership.

Automation

Woolworths announced in June it would open two new distribution centres in south-west Sydney by 2024 at a cost of $780 million – one semi-automated and one fully automated – aimed at increasing productivity around dispatch capabilities to stores. As physical retail moves online, tech companies are looking to automate last-mile delivery (from warehouse to customer), which consulting firm Capgemini estimates comprises 41 per cent of supply chain costs.

Homegrown manufacturing In April, US venture capitalist and thought leader Marc Andreessen, incensed by personal protective equipment shortages, rallied for the reinvigoration of homegrown manufacturing. “To everyone around us,” he wrote in his It’s Time to Build essay, “we should be asking the question: what are you building?” Blair Sinsheimer, general manager of Sneddon & Kingston Plastics, led the Melbourne-based company’s move away from car-part engineering to medical and packaging products pre-COVID, telling the GoAuto website that, following shortages, “People are going to be looking at the globalisation model and asking themselves if it’s really worth it.”

Robots

Brain Corp reports increased demand from industrial and retail companies for its cleaning and restocking robots and in June, Boston Dynamics started selling Spot the mechanical dog, formerly only leasable for dirty, dangerous tasks and navigating stairs. Domestic robots are also going mainstream: searches indicate growing interest in autonomous vacuums, robotic lawnmowers, window cleaners and Litter-Robot, a self-cleaning cat-litter box.

Collaboration models Biochemist Jennifer Doudna, who helped pioneer gene-editing technology CRISPR, told the Fortune Brainstorm Health Conference that this year’s collaborations