White Paper: What COVID Can Teach Us About Building a Crisis-Resistant Business

How 40 middle-market businesses coped with COVID

Sometimes business advice feels like it’s designed for the best of times. But it’s rarely the case that all the stars align. And in the 21st century so far, we’ve faced economic downturns, social turmoil, and a pandemic—all events that put the business world on shaky ground.

We wanted to investigate what businesses can do to thrive in tough times. That’s why we developed our white paper, Make Your Own Luck: What COVID Can Teach Us About Building a Crisis-Resistant Business.

Sterling Woods spoke to 40 executives from middle-market organizations across industries. In the white paper, we explore the patterns unearthed in these conversations with executives and postulate what this means for middle-market organizations hoping to crisis-proof their businesses in 2021 and beyond. In other words, how can you make your own luck?

"We found that 47 percent of companies surveyed launched new products or services between March and October 2020. It seems, perhaps counterintuitively, that the pandemic has been a period of great innovation in business. While crises can present challenges, they also open up new pockets of opportunity for those who know where to look."

Josh Richardson

Yale University

Interview with the authors

In this special edition of the CEO Campfire Chat, Rob and Josh Richardson of Yale University go behind the scenes of the research project to discover why and how some companies are able to thrive in a crisis.