Study On The Technological Innovation Process During The Pandemic

The coronavirus pandemic is one of the major crisis that the world has seen in recent times.The virus that was discovered first in Wuhan spread quickly across national borders and was soon a global pandemic by the world Health Organization.Nations began to lockdown as a means of limiting the aggressive spread of the virus.This did not come as a free launch as global economies saw decline and the pandemic erupted various challenges and troubles in various sectors and industries.The fast-food industry is one of the oldest and huge industries in the world today.Statistics have it that it has a huge annual turnover and is represented by several top multinational companies.Considering the characteristics of the fast-food industry and the emergence of the coronavirus pandemic leaves no trace of doubt about the adversities that the pandemic brought to it.In the wake of such crisis however,many writers wrote about the role of technological innovation to overcome crisis situations yet this knowledge was less researched in relation to the fast-food.This prompted the need for this study to assess the impact of the pandemic on the fast-food industry of Ghana and the role of technological innovation in mitigating the impact.The research mainly draws on technological innovation process to assess if innovation process within the pandemic follows the normal process of innovation as suggested by literature.To explore this,the research used a grounded theory approach and conducted a case study using three fast-food firms in Ghana.Interview data was received and went through the three stage qualitative data coding to get the outcome of the research which indicated that the pandemic brought financial challenges and governmental restrictions as well as marketing challenges to the sector.It further unveiled social media usage and partnering with food hosting firms as the main technological innovations undertaken and unveiled the considerations for such.The research in perspective revealed that the process of innovation however does not follow the traditional innovation pattern as suggested by the initial framework and hence a modified framework emerged as required of a grounded theory research study.This study shown that in a crisis situation innovation processes are altered and firm may not follow the regular pattern of innovation processes due to the urgency of the pandemic and the time constraints.