How Comeback Kids Will Build the New Reality

Learning to Survive and Thrive in a Crisis

The global pandemic feels unprecedented and the current business landscape uncharted. Nevertheless, leadership teams searching for crisis-management strategies that address the impact of COVID-19 have much to learn from companies that survived the global financial crisis of 2008.

The last major economic downturn, known as the Great Recession, was more limited in scope than the one that has emerged during the current pandemic. But both crises have hit some of the same industries hard, although with varying degrees of severity. Our analysis has revealed key insights:

• The transportation and logistics, oil and gas, and fashion and luxury industries are once again suffering, but they are facing less severe declines this time around.
• By contrast, the technology, telecommunications, and consumer products industries—all of which faced declines in 2008—are actually experiencing some growth during the current crisis.

Critically, businesses worldwide faced the same existential threat during the 2008 crisis that they are confronted with today during the COVID-19 pandemic. But some organizations did more than merely survive the Great Recession—they emerged even stronger. We call those organizations the Comeback Kids, and their actions during the past crisis offer a roadmap for success in the COVID-19 era—and beyond.

For Comeback Kids, economic crises spell opportunity: they create clarity and urgency around the need for decisive action. Comeback Kids harness this energy to innovate and redesign their businesses.

One example is Sixt, Europe’s largest car-rental company, which was hit hard by the precipitous drop in travel in 2008. Alexander Sixt, the company’s head of strategy, told BCG in early 2020 that the crisis afforded them a unique opportunity, noting, “We were able to inspect our processes in an incredibly critical way without having to explain why, because it was clear to everyone that it had to be done.”

Comeback Companies

Over the past several years, BCG has published a series of publications to highlight powerful insights from successful turnarounds across a range of industries. A sampling of these stories (some from after 2008) highlight how companies can navigate the impact of COVID-19 and rebuild themselves for stronger performance.

Comeback Lessons from the Financial Crisis

Our most recent analysis has identified the companies that have achieved the best financial performance in the 12 years since the Great Recession. This analysis, combined with our extensive research into Comeback Kids and transformative CEOs, points to five specific steps that companies can take to turn adversity into advantage.