Have a beautiful week. If you are reading this article, be so thankful for the life that has been given to us, to still be alive in the middle of so much despair in the world because of the COVID19 sickness.

In the past, during my first saga “Volvo Ocean Race 2017-2018 Strategy Regatta”, I covered the evolution of industries and the life-cycle of products and services with extreme detail. So, today, I don´t want to repeat all the conceptual frameworks of it again. If you wish to revisit all these subjects, I kindly invite you to read again the whole Leg 5 from Hong Kong to Guangzhou. Find the outline of this past material below (I published it in February 2018), and the URL link of the first episode.

Click here for further information: https://eleonoraescalantestrategy.wordpress.com/2018/01/24/leg-5-from-hong-kong-to-guangzhou-industry-evolution-explained-i/

Today I would like to invite you to reflect a bit when it comes to understanding how our patterns of industry evolution are leading us to a unique spot in time in which we have no other choice than to pause or stop, fix all our social inequalities and business/corporate strategy frameworks, decide for an ecological or sustainable environmental society and create a new method to regulate our inventions, before proceeding further.

Let´s begin. And let´s pick up an example. I will choose a current product that is the center of attention for all of us on the planet. The COVID19 vaccines. At the moment, after almost 12 months that the COVID19 virus contagion started, there are several vaccines that are being inoculated in several countries. I won´t judge any of the technologies utilized, because I am not a medical researcher, and I also won´t settle my time today if one vaccine technology is more or less effective. But I will provide some reflection thoughts in relation to open your eyes to the way in which we have evolved to create our products and services with this example. And it is up to you to evaluate, or to at least realize an ethical valuation.

Everyone who is related to the pharmaceutical industry understands that there are at least several objectives when it comes to vaccines. Some are designed to prevent sickness. Other to immunize you against a malady. And other medicines are designed to attack and cure an organism of a disease.  At the moment, none of the COVID19 vaccines have been designed to cure it once you get the virus, but to immunize you against the virus. The current vaccines are designed to make a mass immunization, and they are applied before the virus arrives in your human body. Given the nature of these vaccines, this is the first time that a set of ADN-ARN technology has been utilized with less than a year of trials. And that is a big situation that we will have to confront in the future.

Do vaccines have the power to stop maladies that hurt us?. Well, that is the purpose of vaccines. But what to do when the same vaccines can or may have the power to hurt us? No one really knows what will happen in terms of long-term consequences for our health with this new tech type of vaccine. No one really knows because not even the top CDC scientists, neither the WHO nor the best doctors on earth are able to tell us. To this day, officially neither the World Health Organization (WHO) neither the CDC (in the USA) or other similar entities in Europe, have made a statement in which we know for sure about the consequences of these vaccines. We ask ourselves, why there isn’t a treatment for the already Corona sick people, to save them to die from the COVID19 virus yet?. Why did the pharma focus to create immunization with the healthy? But no treatment to cure the sick?.  And injections have started to be inoculated. Here we are, asking ourselves what is going to happen to us? I am sure thousands of physicians still believe these vaccines are safe for the long run, but in reality, no one knows.

The vaccines were designed to immunize us. To this day, I have not heard or seen “officially” a “treatment or vaccines or remedies (via oral medication)” that can help us to cure the sickness, once we get infected. That makes me wonder… Why did the pharmaceutical industry choose immunization first, instead of selecting the procedures to find the cure? Why did the big companies went to look for immunization, instead of finding a shot for those who are infected or in the hospital?

Personally, I was expecting since March 2020, a vaccine or a treatment that could heal the infected. My hopes were pivotal to the cure, not to the immunization.  For example, when we are sick of bacteria, we know that antibiotic treatment is a solution. After 7 or 14 or 21 days of antibiotics, the patient is able to heal, and voila! We are Ok again. But this type of medication to cure COVID19 effects on sick patients has never shown up in our radial panorama.

We don´t know anything at the moment.  People are so afraid of the virus, that no one is asking all these questions that come into my mind. And if someone asks the specialists: they are clear to respond to you, that it is better to bear the risks associated with the secondary effects of the vaccines than to do nothing about it, And if you continue asking them about the long-term effects of the vaccine: These physicians also don´t know. Because that is the reality no one knows.

Now let´s go back to the business of any industry. This past example can show us exactly the status of where do we stand now with the commerce global system. I am sure if we ask any professor of management of some kind of prestige: Where do we stand now with the global systems of products and services? He or she will also reply: we don´t know!

And I wonder if we don´t know where do we stand or where are we going, why are we pushing forward for the ubiquitous utilization of the whole combo of disruptive technologies grouped under NAIQIs? _{(Nanotechnology, Artificial Intelligence (robotics and automation), quantum supremacy,} and the Internet and genetic engineering). NAIQIs as the next frontier for our future of work? Why do philanthropists do not consider sponsoring all of us who do independent research about business and economics? Why do many leaders of international cooperation do not watch the business world not just to fix it but to change our theories… or to at least study the industry evolution history as relevant or of importance? In reality, the past, present, and future of business (in all its industries and branches: operations, marketing, human talent resources, finance, research and development, logistics, manufacturing) is affecting everything, including the cooperators, innovators, researchers, and scientists that can save us? Everything has been shaken by the NAIQIS, to a point that all the way we have done business sets us in a place of uncertain answers: because we really don’t know what will happen.

If we don´t see business as a science, we end up creating and implementing business models and strategies only by practice and error, which later throw us in a “we don´t know state”. As the COVID19 vaccines, we have preferred to take risks under the state of “we don´t know the answer”, rather than find a cure for the sick, and wait for the trials, tests, and the time that is regulated before releasing an immunization vaccine.

And that is where we stand now. The evolution of our global markets with all our technologies involved has set us in a pinnacle of “we don’t know”… and what makes me tremble is that “we seem to be happy with that uncertainty, let’s continue doing and selling no matter what, under free markets without any type of relevant regulation, without caring for the future, etc”.  We are not far away from the times of the 15th century people were singing “hoy comamos y bebamos, hasta que nos reventemos, que mañana ayunaremos”.

It is horrible to live with a philosophy of “we don’t know”: It is like dating someone, that has no idea of what he wants in life or who doesn’t want to settle, meanwhile you are looking for a stable marriage and babies. Or it is equivalent to selling petroleum as crazy when this energy technology has been killing our environment, our ecosystems, and our food and survival on the planet. Or it is like to continue using plastics that are harming the oceans. Or it is like trying to go to Mars, investing billions to find life in a place that doesn’t have it meanwhile there are valuable people who have been struggling to find seed capital to continue doing valuable research. Or it is like continue planning to send internet satellites to our atmosphere, to find out in some years from now, that the level of radiofrequency (RF) there (non-ionizing radiation) has been affected in a way that RF energy around the planet will be so very strong, (because of the amount of usage of WiFi, and radar transmitters) that it will be so dangerous for all of us; who will begin to experience heat in several parts of our body causing us serious injuries, like severe burns. Or it is like continue promoting the global supply value chains, without any type of consideration for improving the quality of life or promoting all the workers to at least become middle-class citizens. Or it is like continue to use the disruptive technologies premises that kill the old high quality, embrace the new at low cost, without any respect for the beauty and good things of the old ways. Or it is like eating genetically modified food, and then wine about why did we end up in chemotherapy. And we continue creating, designing, and rolling out products and services with the philosophy of “we don´t know, who cares, let´s simply sell and become rich”. To write all this doesn´t make me a socialist or communist at all. On the contrary, I always stick to ethical capitalism full of integrity as a way to evolve and fix our current urgent issues.

I would like to close this article with a minute of silence and respect for one of my beloved cousins, Osmaro Barrientos Chinchilla, who left his “terrenal” life in this world because of the COVID19. He passed away last Friday after less than a week of hospitalization at “Hospital El Salvador”. My deepest condolences to his wife Isabel and his two daughters Alejandra and Rebeca. I join the family mourning for such a great loss.

See you next Friday with the 5^th theme: Formulating the concept of pricing and understanding it. Thank you for reading to me.

Sources of reference used today:
https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10198-020-01208-6
https://www.nejm.org/doi/full/10.1056/NEJMp2005630
https://www.epa.gov/radtown/non-ionizing-radiation-wireless-technology
https://www.bbc.com/news/health-55040635

Disclaimer: Illustrations in Watercolor are painted by Eleonora Escalante. Other types of illustrations or videos (which are not mine) are used for educational purposes ONLY.  Nevertheless, the majority of the pictures, images, or videos shown on this blog are not mine.  I do not own any of the lovely photos or images posted unless otherwise stated.

Published by eleonoraescalantestrategy

Corporate Strategy Artist, San Salvador, El Salvador View all posts by eleonoraescalantestrategy