Are Robots Overrated? | Innovation - Harvard Business Review

The pandemic has increased the demand — and the hype, according to Sameer Hasija, professor at INSEAD, Singapore, and holds the Shell Fellowship in Business and the Environment and Aarti Gumaledar, executive at Energentech Advisors, a tech consultancy based in Singapore.

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In the midst of the COVID-19 pandemic, robots have been having a moment. Media outlets across the world have reported on robots successfully delivering on critical tasks in healthcare facilities and their effectiveness as contagion-proof workers in many other settings. Robots have even been extolled as “heroes” helping to “manage” the pandemic.
It’s easy to see why. Robots are carrying out essential work such as disinfecting surfaces, checking on patients’ vitals, and delivering food and medicine to patients in quarantine. These solutions minimize human to human contact and reduce the risk of health workers contracting the infection from patients and surfaces in hospitals. The unprecedented labor shortages resulting from lockdowns around the world have encouraged even the most reluctant of users and businesses to adopt new technologies...

Should we believe the hype? For a company to maximize the benefit from switching to robots, two conditions need to be met.
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Source: Harvard Business Review