MIT Sloan Management Review Article on Making Meaningful Customer Connections in a New Era

A century ago, after a global pandemic upended the global economy, the rebound that followed produced enormous growth, consumerism, and technological advancement in a decade that’s still referred to as the Roaring ’20s. As the world recovers from our own once-in-a-lifetime-pandemic, businesses and leaders must now adapt to the changes made in the past two years to deliver on new customer expectations in the next era — one that is being defined by accelerated transformation.

One of the pandemic’s most consistent features across sectors has been its ability to accelerate existing trends by decades in a matter of just weeks or months. Take e-commerce, which for the past two decades had grown 1% annually and represented 16% of U.S. retail at the beginning of 2020.

About the Author

Ally MacDonald (@allymacdonald) is senior editor at MIT Sloan Management Review.

Learn more about MIT SMR.