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How are We Faring? Reflections on Coronavirus and its Effects on the Innovation Management Scholarly Community

  • 1.  How are We Faring? Reflections on Coronavirus and its Effects on the Innovation Management Scholarly Community

    Posted 04-17-2021 22:24
    This article was very interesting because it shed light on the growing impact that COVID has had on the academic community.  The majority of the concern in the media, and rightfully so, has been on the elementary and lower level education systems, but it is important to note the concerns on the innovative side of the scholars as this article did.  The first section was focused on a survey completed by several different scholars regarding how research has been impacted.  One surprising comment was how company representatives have been unavailable to help scholars with their research (pg. 476).  It was noted how everyone's personal lives were impacted and many had additional roles/jobs on their hands with their families being at home, but for many others their social calendar was essentially wiped clean.  If anything, my thought would have been that they would be able to get better data with individuals having more time on their hands.

    One positive impact of the pandemic was the focus of creating more interest in digital innovation.  Since we have had the negative impact of there being no in-person interactions that tend to spark many productive conversations, having the tools that would still allow us to recover some of that interaction would be beneficial.  We have all experienced the complexity and constraints that some of this amazing technology we have creates when holding a larger conversation.  An example that was provided was the change to having seminars only in person to being fully online (pg.477).  By them being fully online, scholars may have fewer calendar conflict issues and save funds by avoid travel costs.  It also allows the speakers to reach a larger and more wide spread audience.

    In the last section of the article, it was mentioned that COVID may have an "incremental cost of lost timelessness" when it came to scholarly articles not being published quick enough (pg. 481).  Depending on the topic, I think some articles may be better off being published until the pandemic is considered over.  Then the topic of discussion will have had thorough research of how the pandemic affected it from the start to finish and how it did or didn't change afterwards.

    Overall, one important point that was expressed in the article that I think all of humanity can use was "don't panic".  As long as you are staying healthy, everything will work itself out in the end.  

    Reference
    Noble, C.H. and Spanjol, J. (2020), How are We Faring? Reflections on Coronavirus and its Effects on the Innovation Management Scholarly Community. J. Prod. Innov. Manag., 37: 474-482. 
    https://doi-org.huaryu.kl.oakland.edu/10.1111/jpim.12558

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    Sarah Mattern
    Oakland University
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