Background: Firms need to innovate to remain competitive and innovation requires multiple stakeholders to collaborate to successfully identify new opportunities. When unable to meet an interact, we would like to understand how these stakeholders connect and what other impact on innovation performance should be considered when collaborating remotely. 

Objectives: The thesis aims to identify underlying management theory and establish a model which will be used to interview employees of suitable firms. The study will then apply the model and strive to validate whether COVID-19 drives innovation and if it can be successfully performed during personal movement restrictions. 

Methodology: This study is exploratory and qualitative with 4 propositions based on theoretical models tested against a selected panel of interviewees. 

Results: The analysis surfaces that COVID-19 positively impacted employee commitment, competency and satisfaction while balancing employees working remotely. Both employees and firms found themselves more productive, relying on IT systems for incremental simplification of non-value-added activities. All firms did not however convert this momentum to innovation related performance to date. Overall, employees did find it advantageous being able to balance work and life, while firms enjoyed greater productivity. 

Recommendations for future research: The link between greater productivity, staff satisfaction and realization of the same deserves additional attention as the scope of this study did not permit further review on an industry and past innovation performance level. 

Keywords: performance, innovation, remote work, covid-19, management, productivity