Return-2-x (R2[x]): Discovering The [New] Normal In A Covid-19 World

COVID-19 has disrupted life as we know it-- work, school, healthcare, the basics of family life-- to a degree we have never experienced.  As people begin the journey back to community and economic health, they will do so with different expectations in virtually everything.

CincyTech is a seed investment firm.  We engage with companies and technologies at the earliest stage, and are wired to look forward to anticipate emerging needs and trends. In early March we began to design a survey to inform our portfolio companies on potential Covid-19 related risks and opportunities, and also inform our future investment strategy.  Along the way, we realized our findings would be of value to others in the community as we prepare for a collective restart. Therefore, we are sharing insights from a survey we're calling Return-2-X, or R2[X], where X is unknown.  How might we understand and prepare for a future where normal life is new and different?

• Sixty percent of respondents in our poll of 500 Americans said they would not return to their regular activities.
• People chose reopening schools as their top priority more than the next four most popular choices combined.

You can read the full report here by clicking the cover:

We are currently running our 2nd cohort of this survey to track trends in the data. We are planning more specific surveys with partners now, to discover additional insights. We have partnered with a local surveying vendor Acupoll for execution. We will be employing university students to do much of the process, production, and analytics work.  You can sign up to receive the next R2[X] here.

We will be co-creating with partners on new, specific studies in healthcare, education, commerce, and other topics. We will be augmenting our survey data with relevant external context.

This is a Cincinnati-region initiative in origin and execution. It builds on regional expertise in insights and leverages our great universities and partners in an effort to accelerate our recovery from this unprecedented challenge.  We hope what began as an internal pipeline project will serve a larger purpose.