Shift Magazine - April 2020 - 4

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shift * april 2020

lifetime ago, in midDecember, our team
piled into a small
conference room to lay the
groundwork for a Shift issue focused
on innovation and venture capital.
The magazine would spotlight
an exciting new Automotive News
initiative, PACEpilot, which honors
groundbreaking technologies
that have not yet reached
commercialization. Honoree selection was underway. The plan
was to reveal the inaugural class at a March event in Detroit, part
of our first-ever Innovation Week.
Less than two weeks after that planning meeting, the World
Health Organization received reports of a mysterious outbreak
of pneumonia in Wuhan, China. Unbeknownst to any of us, what
would become the coronavirus pandemic - and the dawn of the
age of social distancing - had begun.
We decided around March 11 that the Detroit event had to
be postponed, and days later we on the Automotive News staff
suddenly found ourselves writing, editing, Slacking and Zooming
from home. But we were lucky: Most of the PACEpilot profiles
that you'll see in this issue were prepared before the world went
into lockdown mode. And we will turn what would have been a
physical event into a series of virtual ones (see Page 12).
That's good, because these stories of hard work and ingenuity
are a reminder of the promise of innovation. The creative spirit
lives on. The seeds that have been planted, and the ones that
will be sown once this crisis abates, will sprout in the soil of a
changed world.
There will be challenges. Some players in mobility and
technology will go from being disrupters to being disrupted and
will be forced to reinvent themselves. But at least for now, there
are still investors eager to work with startups. The COVID-19
crisis may even create opportunities for some businesses.
Many of history's biggest technological changes grew out of
war. The enemy is different this time, but the army of innovators
stands ready to deploy.
Sincerely,

Leslie J. Allen
Editor
lallen@crain.com

STAFF
Editor
Leslie J. Allen
Chief of Editorial Operations
Dave Versical
Chief Content Officer
Jamie Butters
Managing Editor
Mary Beth Vander Schaaf
Deputy Mobility Editor
Pete Bigelow
Reporters
Whitney McDonald
Alexa St. John
Copy Editors
Amy Butters
Tim Good
Elizabeth Hardy
Cynthia Orosco-Wright
Contributors
Marcus Amick
Sebastian Blanco
Dale Buss
Jack Keebler
Senior Art Director
Michele L. Trombley
Associate Publisher
Karen Rentschler
Global Marketing Director
Kathy Lightbody
Shift Magazine - April 2020

Table of Contents for the Digital Edition of Shift Magazine - April 2020
