Spontaneous Innovation in Time of Crisis

Any crisis requires strong capabilities to respond to the change in circumstances. The COVID-19 crisis is not only an economic crisis but first and foremost a health crisis. This crisis resulted in a call for immediately delivered health-care solutions, especially a rise in demand for critical personal protective equipment. This paper draws on the theory of innovation management in times of crisis to identify the capabilities enabling spontaneous innovation. We utilise a dataset of 190 firms that responded to a call for solutions in Denmark by the Confederation of Danish Industry during the COVID-19 epidemic in the Spring of 2020. This paper identifies 6 types of offers such as transformation of production into new product offerings.