The Role of Innovation in the Health Crisis and the Sustainable Post-COVID Europe

Abstract

The multifaceted 2020 crisis, caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, affected both functioning of the economy and everyday life. The unprecedented character of the ways national economies had to deal with the COVID-19 outbreak had brought about the need for innovation development. At the same time, each country was affected by the effects of the pandemic to a different extent. A socioeconomic, spatial and cultural diversity of the European continent is a prime example illustrating different approaches in which countries attempted to deal with the disease, whose spread in Europe was diverse in terms of a time and degree to which each state was affected. This study aims to assess whether regional innovation was an important determinant of how well each European country dealt with the second wave of the pandemic. The second goal of this paper is to depict the role of innovation in shaping sustainable post-COVID future. In order to assess the effectiveness of anti-COVID measures and investigate the possible multifaceted causes of this effectiveness during the second wave of the pandemic (the period from 38 to 47th week of 2020 was selected), an OLS econometric linear model and ML spatial models were estimated. A number of excess deaths per 1000 inhabitants was chosen as a dependent variable. Observations consisted of 235 NUTS 2 regions of the European Union member states (without Austria and Ireland) and Switzerland. This econometric analysis of the current situation was enriched by the qualitative description revolving around the highly-innovative luxury and fashion industry, which was used as an example, concretizing how innovation contributed to the narrative of facing the crisis while developing more sustainable and long term solutions henceforth. An econometric analysis showed that a relatively high innovation level, including the quality of human resources (measuring the level of civil society) and intellectual assets, may mitigate the effects of the pandemic. Furthermore, the econometric analysis provided additional conclusions concerning other determinants of anti-COVID measures—behavior changes, psychological aspects, economic situation of modest households, lockdown stringency, testing rate, quality of the healthcare system, modern populist policies, percentage of people aged 65 years and more, and poor air quality. One of the most important findings provided by the SAR econometric model indicated that, among other factors, knowledge hubs can be important in interregional attempts to mitigate the effects of such challenges as COVID-19 pandemic. The second part of the chapter highlights the fact that the luxury industry, at its core, is sustainable and offers superior value and has an inherent ability to make timeless emotional connections in people’s minds—which may prove to be important for the post-pandemic world. In the unprecedented turbulent times, more intimate values of luxury may prove to be more relevant than ever. The very meaning of luxury is also set to become much more diversified and contextual. The importance of the luxury industry in shaping the post-COVID sustainable future is associated with its ability to quickly adapt to the changing consumer expectations and societal landscape in general. The concept of revisiting its roots by the luxury industry concretizes the ideas behind the reality of our society’s current state and the expectations thereafter due to global climate change.