Accelerated innovation through repurposing: exaptation of design and manufacturing in response to COVID‐19

Abstract

As the COVID‐19 pandemic spread across the globe in the first quarter of 2020, demand for specialised equipment in hospitals soared. As a result, firms from a variety of sectors repurposed their design and manufacturing to create new products in days. By examining 80 cases of this accelerated innovation, the research investigates how a shared purpose drives change in the innovation process. It applies the lens of exaptation – the discovery of unintended functions for technologies – to explain how product complexity and ecosystem structure affect accelerated innovation in this context. The research extends the application of exaption to manufacturing as well as product design; it identifies a relationship between complexity, exaptation and ecosystems. The research suggests that the ability to exapt design and manufacturing can determine a firm’s ecosystem role. These results lead to implications for theory and for practice, during the response to and recovery from the crisis.

How is COVID-19 altering the manufacturing landscape? A literature review of imminent challenges and management interventions

“…The manufacturing industry was under tremendous pressure to meet the sudden increase in demand for critical medical equipment and associated paraphernalia, such as ventilators, surgical masks, gloves, testing swabs, face shields, sanitizers, respirators, oxygen valves, and other personal protective equipment (PPE) (Advincula et al, 2020 ; Bragazzi, 2020 ; Diaz-Elsayed et al, 2020 ; Hoosain et al, 2020 ; Liu et al, 2021a , 2021b ; Napoleone & Prataviera, 2020 ; Patel & Gohil, 2020 ; Queiroz et al, 2020 ; Tareq et al, 2021 ; Wuest et al, 2020 ). The World Health Organization (WHO) stated that PPE production had to go up by 40% to meet the shortage in 2020 (Diaz-Elsayed et al, 2020 ).…”

“…Reconfiguring their industrial systems and machine tools enabled manufacturers to adapt their production lines and capacities to new demands, enabling repurposing (Monostori & Váncza, 2020 ; Napoleone & Prataviera, 2020 ). For instance, car manufacturers repurposed their lines to produce respirators (Advincula et al, 2020 ; Monostori & Váncza, 2020 ), and appliance manufacturers repurposed production lines of hairdryers and vacuum cleaners to produce ventilators (W. Liu et al, 2021a , 2021b ). Following governments’ appeals to share supply chain capabilities and manufacturing capacities to meet critical life-saving equipment shortages (Advincula et al, 2020 ; Elsahn & Siedlok, 2021 ), the public and societies worldwide also stepped up as repurposed manufacturers.…”

“…Reviewing these abstracts reduced the shortlist to 59 articles, which were then read in full to confirm their applicability and extract relevant insights aligned with the research objectives of this review. Reading the full articles revealed that not all the studies fitted the scope of this review; for instance, Liu et al, ( 2021a , 2021b ) have sharing economy as the main focus of their study; although they briefly discuss a COVID-scenario and how manufacturers participating in sharing economy perform during COVID-19, no specific challenges and interventions that can assist manufacturers fight COVID-19 are presented. The final shortlist contained 56 relevant articles which were reviewed in full to be included in this paper.…”

Reimagining Innovation Amid the COVID-19 Pandemic: Insights From the WISH Innovation Programme

“…Other industries, sometimes with no clear links to the healthcare industry, are also following suit. Several firms, for example, have exapted their capacities and capabilities to produce PPE ( 28 ). In addition, a number of cosmetic brands have started manufacturing hand sanitizers to meet the increase in demand.…”

Navigating the New Normal: Which firms have adapted better to the COVID-19 disruption?

“…Very recent studies on the effects of COVID-19 complement this body of knowledge through qualitative evidence regarding the role of exaptation 1 /repurposing (Ardito, Coccia and Petruzzelli, 2021;Liu, Beltagui and Ye, 2021) and open innovation via crowd funding (Vermicelli, Cricelli and Grimaldi, 2021) in developing innovations to cope with the medical, social and economic challenges raised by COVID-19. However, as discussed in the previous section, while innovation remains one of the most lucrative and impactful strategies firms have at their disposal to combat the negative effects of a crisis, we still lack knowledge on the reversal of this relationship: that is, whether firms that innovate stand a better chance of adapting to crises, and in particular to complex, global crises such as COVID-19.…”