Emerging from the crisis with a new business model

The trade show construction industry was unprepared for COVID-19 and felt the full brunt of the crisis. The entire business of many companies collapsed overnight. This was also the case with Annabell Pehlivan’s customer, STANDout, Austria’s largest trade fair stand builder. All current and scheduled trade fairs were canceled, staff were on short-time work and some employees unfortunately had already left the company. To stop the employee layoffs and the fluctuation and decline in sales, liquidity had to be restored quickly. The pressure was on, both financially and in terms of time.

It quickly became clear that STANDout needed an efficient innovation process with a focus on speed, motivation and the highest possible output. This implied the development of new business models which would allow new sales to be generated quickly. The “turnaround innovation” process introduced by Ms. Pehlivan was based on a method which built on the company’s core competencies and linked them to current trends. In this way, promising ideas were rapidly developed using a framework of workshops with employees from diverse departments, and these ideas were able to be tested quickly on the market.