The disruptions resulting from the COVID-19 pandemic have been unprecedented to the global economy, potentially leading to a deep and record global recession. All parties are inevitably affected but a good range of business functions have demonstrated a high degree of resilience against all the odds and have continued to evolve. While many companies have failed to maintain a healthy position despite the support of the pandemic relief schemes provided by the governments, many others have seized the opportunity to create a different type of normal to survive the economic fallout from COVID-19. Moreover, many East Asian cities have kept the virus in check without having to impose hard nationwide lockdowns. The benefits of some approaches are clear to see, why were there only a few attempts to replicate Asian responses to COVID-19 in the West? Was it the difference in culture? Was it a difference in ideologies and identities? Was it the difference in the geopolitical landscape? Why have the generalizable strategic decisions become questionably ungeneralizable? Did the East and West have different normals in the past and will the post-COVID era lead us to many different ‘normals’?

Amidst the discussion about anti-pandemic measures imposed by the governments and their adverse impacts on economies, many companies have reset priorities, devised new strategies and repositioned themselves through speeding up their digital transformation, and data-centric networking and decision making. The attitudinal change towards hygiene and cleanliness, behavioural changes in leisure and shopping, customers’ rising expectations on their experience on digital platforms have posed new challenges to the existing businesses as well as opening up opportunities for new businesses. New businesses have emerged and flourished while those which adopted a wait-and-see strategy paid the price. COVID-19 has kicked off a new business cycle and the new normal will soon become the norm. It would be of interest to both the academia and business practitioners to discover how organisations structure themselves and recast business strategy and priorities, both within and across organisational boundaries, and to embrace the new normal at various levels of their operations in order to stay sophisticated, competitive and resilient in the post-COVID-19 era.