Part 1: Santa Cruz COVID-19 Innovation—Global Solutions

Photo credit: Aaron Brick

As the looming threat of global crisis due to COVID-19 approached, SupplyShift CEO Alex Gershenson and his team sat down (virtually, of course) to assess the quickly changing situation. 

First, they asked: How can we best help companies understand what’s going on? 

Secondly, they committed to providing something free of charge. “Upfront, we said, ‘We’re not going to charge for this,’” Gershenson told me. “This is the time to help.”

Visibility Means Readiness

Already armed with a flexible platform and understanding of global supply chains, they saw an opportunity to help ease the strain of companies hit by COVID-19 disruptions.

Within a week, they launched a powerful no-cost Supply Chain Visibility and COVID-19 Impact Assessment. On March 17, SupplyShift announced in a press release that this free assessment aimed at “enabling [companies] to remain proactive in a time of uncertainty.”

SupplyShift’s one-of-a-kind mapping tool allows users to load in their list of suppliers (virtually unlimited in number) and to easily identify, trace, and engage with suppliers. Having visibility into one’s supply chain means being prepared for disruption. In our current crisis, not knowing that a supplier is based in Italy or Wuhan, for example, could have been disastrous to a company’s operations.

“We launched our COVID-19 essentials product just under two weeks ago, and already have 45 companies expressing interest,” Gershenson says. Most of those contacts were brand-new to SupplyShift.

Gershenson describes SupplyShift’s COVID-19 mapping assessment as “a pulse-check on your entire supply chain” that can be cascaded down (to suppliers of suppliers and so on)—a potentially huge network that would prove tedious, if not impossible, to communicate with one-by-one.

Amidst extreme upheaval, the (un)likelihood of someone answering the phone puts companies in an even worse situation. Add in ever-changing circumstances and you have a recipe for disaster. Is a supplier disrupted right now? Are they on country-wide lockdown? Are factories closed? How long will it take to resume normal operations and distribution? Companies around the world were panicking to understand these questions—and SupplyShift was ready to provide answers.

Because SupplyShift’s platform is so flexible, the company was already set up to work with clients of all industries, sizes, and locations. While most of their clients have historically been Fortune 500s, they’re also seeing medium-sized companies jump in to take advantage of the free assessment.

And that speedy launch of a no-cost, flexible, global program? 

“That’s testament to this team,” Gershenson says, “and a testament to the strength of this platform.” 

(And let’s remember that that’s a team of real people, who, like all of us, are experiencing the stress and challenge of the COVID-19 pandemic daily.)

“We’re all connected and much closer than we thought,” Gershenson noted when I asked him how this moment in history will shape the global mindset. “It’s going to be a clear and obvious conclusion.”

Even recently, supply chain transparency and responsibility was a back-burner focus for many companies. In a 2018 Deloitte survey, only about 6% of procurement leaders in Global 1000 companies said they had full transparency of their entire supply chain. 65% said they had limited or no visibility beyond Tier 1.

“Post-COVID, that will be an unacceptable response,” Gershenson believes. “You need to know where your supply chain is, so that when you do get that news alert,” you know the impact on your business. 

Gershenson predicts that, in the post-pandemic world, not only will supply chain transparency be top-of-mind for companies that haven’t previously considered its importance, but also that environmentally and ethically responsible supply chains will be even more center-stage.

“COVID will be used as a parallel to lots of other kinds of disruptions. It will serve as a common framework for everybody in the world, “Gershenson says.

Most poignantly, he’s thinking of the urgent disruptions awaiting us as a result of climate change. Although “disruption” hardly feels like a striking enough word for what’s coming without serious energy put toward the  resolving climate crisis.

A Common Cause 

The climate crisis is a parallel on Eric Ressler’s mind, too, as his company and clients respond to a rapidly changing world.

“This pandemic has instantly mobilized and unified all of us in a way that the climate crisis should have already done,” the Founder and Creative Director of Cosmic says. 

“We’re all unified around a common cause—to protect ourselves in the short term, and to create a more just world in the long term.” 

As a company committed to social purpose, Cosmic was already poised to approach big, human-focused problems when the pandemic hit. And as a multi-disciplinary branding agency, building digital experiences is Cosmic’s bread and butter. Like SupplyShift, Cosmic works with clients across the globe, so working remotely with their clients wasn’t much of a change, either.

But what has shifted is the world of Cosmic’s clients: mission-driven organizations who are used to “boots on the ground” fundraising and engagement like events, in-person interactions, local fundraising and networking. 

“The question becomes: how do we create that change, knowing that we will need to do more digital fundraising, advocacy, engagement?” 

“Mindset of Yes”

More than ever, Ressler and his team are focusing on meaningful content and interactive storytelling. An organization’s digital presence is now of utmost importance, but the online space is also more impacted than ever. We’re overwhelmed with newsletters, updates and alerts, newsfeeds bursting with information. A digital branding expert will be the first to tell you that producing content for content’s sake isn’t worth it.

“The compelling content cuts through the noise,” Ressler says. “The best stuff wins.”

Cosmic is leaning into interactive digital content, in which the user has an effect on what they see—like recent New York Times interactive long-form pieces and FiveThirtyEight’s unique infographics. Digital storytelling has been moving in this direction, and now, Ressler says, and that’s where its future lies.

While Cosmic’s focus has always been helping impact organizations create compelling, lively digital experiences that drive mission-based change, this work now feels more relevant than ever before. It takes resources and skills that non-profits just don't have the capacity to achieve.

Some of Cosmic’s clients were already set up with a strong foundation for changing course quickly. Cosmic had previously worked with the Community Foundation of Santa Cruz County (CFSCC) to overhaul their brand and revamp their online presence. Because disaster relief is a core function of CFSCC, Cosmic prioritized creating a functional platform with the best possible online donation flow, making sure CFSCC was empowered to rapidly respond to changing events.

So when the COVID-19 crisis hit, CFSCC was able to respond immediately, launching a COVID-10 relief fund and resource hub swiftly and independently. Cosmic had enabled them with the resources and knowledge.

But it would be more profitable to leave a client reliant on your services, so you could charge them each time they needed to make a change, right?

Indeed, it would be.

“If we were going to try to be as profitable as possible, we would be running a very different company right now,” Ressler says. “I think that’s where the world is going.”

As he sees it, the world at large is being forced into fundamental structural change right now—and that creates both room and fuel for opportunity, alongside undeniable grief and tragedy. Ressler believes that exclusively profit-focused enterprise is on the way out in favor of more whole-picture, mission-driven work. 

Not only that, he sees an opportunity for more empathetic, action-focused conversations around inequality and injustice in the world.

“Change happens rapidly in times like these,” Ressler says. This is a time for global society as a whole to create better structures for moving forward into a more equitable world.

This universal global shift that both Eric Ressler and Alex Gershenson (and their hardworking teams) envision isn’t just responsive change—although, unfortunately, it seems to be taking a world-wide emergency to push the public into an awareness of issues of equity and sustainability.

These companies envision and fight for pre-emptive, self-initiated change. Big and small shifts toward environmental responsibility, socially ethical business practices, and a view of interconnectedness.

But change isn’t simple. As Ressler points out, it takes “a combination of policy and advocacy work, education and awareness-building, and consensus of multiple organizations working together.”

Ressler emphasizes the importance of his team’s “mindset of yes” right now. That means moving past paralysis and fear to actively seek methods of innovation, flexibility, and creative thinking around solutions to problems that the world has never experienced—or perhaps has just been unwilling to look at.

That’s why powerful tools and passionate talent teams like those of SupplyShift and Cosmic are essential for well-designed, sustainable forward motion. The timing is painful but right; a window has opened for these world-shifting projects to be humanity’s focus.

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(Next week, read more about that “mindset of yes” from local companies solving local problems, like Cloud Brigade, Idea Fab Labs, and Humble Sea.)