Teaching COVID-19’s Impact on Businesses

The year 2020 will be remembered in History as a year of crisis. A difficult year, full of losses, much inability, and much sorrow. Our special issue about the COVID-19 is an effort to take something good from such devastating times. To reflect about the challenges that we live and what we can learn from them. During a lecture in 2020, Jared Diamond, author of Guns, germs and steel, declared that the coronavirus was not the main challenge of humanity. Instead, the greatest challenges in the planet would be the difficulties when dealing with diversity and inclusion, the unsustainable use of planet resources, and the growing inequality that marginalizes a major share of the global population. From the author’s point of view, COVID-19 could maybe help us tackling these problems depending on how we are going to react. We do have this possibility because the crisis resulting from the pandemic has made clear to us all that the borders are ever more fluid, that we live in a single ecosystem, and that everything we do has an impact upon ourselves, but also upon others. We share this vision. We have realized that, when confronting the need for such a deep transformation, the role of education is absolutely fundamental. A renewed education, that emerges from this crisis without expectation to offer the right answers. We already know that right answers are not available, yet education should help us make the right questions and reflect about what really matters.