Pathology

Sociology

Business

Disease

Coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19)

Infectious disease (medical specialty)

Knowledge management

Biology

Pandemic

Outbreak

Political science

Virology

Geography

Set (abstract data type)

Anthropology

Programming language

Scale (ratio)

Crisis response

2019-20 coronavirus outbreak

Public relations

Computer science

Cartography

Typology

Severe acute respiratory syndrome coronavirus 2 (SARS-CoV-2)

Medicine

Technological Forecasting and Social Change

As a microcosm for future challenges, the COVID-19 pandemic exhibits increasingly transboundary dynamics, causing interconnected problems across multiple societal systems. To examine the role of innovations as a social mechanism to reconcile these arising challenges, we view the unfolding of the pandemic through the lens of a content analysis of 707 innovation projects that address the fundamental human needs of consumers and businesses. This study proposes a novel procedure to characterize large-scale innovative activities via text mining and employs a theoretical framework for identifying the pressing societal needs amidst crises. Our typology of rapid-response COVID-19 innovations exhibits a diverse set of domains ranging from technological innovations to what may be described as frugal and social innovations. We provide evidence for the growing prevalence of social needs beyond the basic notion of safety during the early months of the crisis. Our contributions show that a structural model of innovation activities and their latent drivers may help policy makers and innovators to move toward achieving a systemic reaction to such crises.

Crisis-driven innovation and fundamental human needs: A typological framework of rapid-response COVID-19 innovations