ACADEMIA Letters ARTIFICIAL LANDSCAPE STRATEGY: A BUSINESS GROWTH RECOVERY PLAN IN THE POST PANDEMIC WORLD Amitab Bhattacharjee Asghar Afshar Jahanshahi Abstract The aim of this article is to unfold business strategic directions to achieve sustainable post pandemic business recoveries. Therefore, in this study we develop a reforming business strategy (artificial landscape strategy) with four assumptions. By executing these assumptions, entrepreneurs or firms may gain sustainable business performance with higher competitive advantages over unexpected losses due to COVID-19 pandemic. Additionally, the scope of ALS will be extremely wide and effective to increase the firm’s revenue sustainability. Henceforth, the appropriate implementation of artificial landscape strategy would identically improve business performance recoveries in the post pandemic world. Keywords: Artificial landscape strategy; Business performance; COVID-19; Entrepreneurs; Post pandemic business recoveries. Introduction Unpredictably, the COVID-19 pandemic hit more or less every manufacturing or service industry around the world during the last year (Açikgöz & Günay, 2020). Throughout the same year (2020), the outdoor business activities were dramatically changed due to a steady surge in the SARS-CoV-2 outbreak (Shen et al., 2020). As a result, a significant number of firms Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Amitab Bhattacharjee, bhattacharjee.ar@gmail.com Citation: Bhattacharjee, A., Jahanshahi, A.A. (2021). ARTIFICIAL LANDSCAPE STRATEGY: A BUSINESS GROWTH RECOVERY PLAN IN THE POST PANDEMIC WORLD. Academia Letters, Article 2311. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2311. 1 in the world have experienced enourmous decline in operating profit that leads about to partially/fully liquidation. Even probably, many existing self-employed individuals in the tourism sector may be searching for an opportunity to switch to salary (employed) life (Bhattacharjee & Bansal, 2021; Seetharaman, 2020). These changes escort many firms to make new strategic drives. Therefore, we articulately developed a post pandemic business recovery strategy because business strategy has a positive relation with the firm’s performance. This strategy has four assumptions (see figure 1) and all assumptions have prolific impacts on the firm’s performance. By the appropriate implementation of this strategy, entrepreneurs would enjoy a wide scope of earning fresh revenues with long term assets appreciation. In this view, wide scope refers to the expansions of business activities beyond the same geographical area and appreciation denotes the sustainable increase in zero or low risk weighted assets (tangible or intangible), which is why this strategy is named as artificial landscape strategy (ALS). However, to elucidate the scope of this strategy, we have included situational overviews of different business sectors through addressing the four assumptions of ALS. Figure 1: The four assumptions of artificial landscape strategy (Source: Author’s elaboration). Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Amitab Bhattacharjee, bhattacharjee.ar@gmail.com Citation: Bhattacharjee, A., Jahanshahi, A.A. (2021). ARTIFICIAL LANDSCAPE STRATEGY: A BUSINESS GROWTH RECOVERY PLAN IN THE POST PANDEMIC WORLD. Academia Letters, Article 2311. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2311. 2 Discussion The first assumption of artificial landscape strategy suggests that the existing business activities should be reorganized for other potential revenue-earnings that increase business growth of two different firms. Precisely, this assumption describes one or more business alliances between two firms of different industries but there should have potential tangible or intangible assets utilization interests such as tourism sector and agro sector because both industries have similar interests in the utilization of tangible assets in the perspective of natural orientation. According to this assumption, the well-organized agro field could be an attractive theme park for the tourism sector. For example, the sunflower plantation area might be a suitable destination for tourists. In this way, tourists may get charming natural experiments while agro entrepreneurs will be benefited with higher revenue growth through selling sunflower seeds oil or other related products and enhancing tourism activities inside the plantation zone. This extensive plan would bring additional revenues for the agro entrepreneurs and even raise low operating costs based revenue-earning scope for the firms in the tourism sector. The second assumption recommends developing completely new or nearly-new business improvement by accumulating eco-friendly low-risk weighted assets developments or implementing essential changes in the assets utilization process that increases long term competitive advantages of the firm. Additionally, this assumption is extended to encourage a concern on reducing high-risk weighted assets to gain sustainable revenues in the long term. Agro oriented floating resort and rentable land developments are the pertinent examples of the second assumption. More elaborately, many theme parks have boat riding but visitor’s traffic has significantly declined to zero due to the COVID-19 pandemic. In this situation, these parks may replace the fuel boat riding by paddle steamer in a shallow lake. This paddle steamer should be standard sized so that one person or two persons or maximum a family could ride on it. This floating steamer could be decorated with living plants (e.g., vegetables) and adding artificial green sitting space where a person could spend pleasant moments during the rides in the lake. Furthermore, the wide flat land area on both sides of the lake should be used for agro-firming. So, it might be a good idea to open a tent shop, where visitors could buy fresh vegetables and other firming items that would be planted in the park-agro field. Thus, people may enjoy a safe recreational ride while the park entrepreneurs earn revenues from the rides as well as selling fresh agro items. The next example would be the situational evidence of the changes in the assets utilization process. The airbus industry has been badly affected by the coronavirus pandemic (Açikgöz & Günay, 2020). Throughout the world, most of the airlines are still out of regular flight operations, which is why the airlines companies have experienced steady operating losses caused by spending higher maintenance costs. Therefore the first pri- Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Amitab Bhattacharjee, bhattacharjee.ar@gmail.com Citation: Bhattacharjee, A., Jahanshahi, A.A. (2021). ARTIFICIAL LANDSCAPE STRATEGY: A BUSINESS GROWTH RECOVERY PLAN IN THE POST PANDEMIC WORLD. Academia Letters, Article 2311. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2311. 3 ority change should be done in the airbus service orientations. Such as, most of the passenger service airbuses might be the best alternative of currier or valuable goods carrier airplanes (e.g., transporting Oxygen cylinders or other emergency medical liquids/equipment around the world) until the regular passenger’s flight starts on. Implementing these changes would poise marginal or operating revenues and increase the performance recovery. The third assumption describes that firms or entrepreneurs should jointly/solely invest or reinvest their funds in two or more different sectors, where minimum one of those investments must meet any one or more daily needs product or service of the individuals. For example, a person couldn’t live without having food but the same person wouldn’t die if he/she doesn’t ride any airbus throughout his/her life. This example depicts that whatever the situation, a person must need to take food regularly. Therefore, firms having contribution in the basic needs products or services markets would have long term competitive advantages to gain fresh revenues. Another example is about the super markets. During the Coronavirus pandemic emergency, the sales volume in the super markets increases while airlines, tourism firms experience a steady decline in the earning minimum revenues (Bhattacharjee & Jahanshahi, 2020). Furthermore, this assumption highly discourages investors to invest or reinvest funds in two or more hyper devaluation-industries because the hyper devaluation industry (e.g., share markets or debenture markets) has higher risk in zero returns and even a significant decrease in the principal investment amounts. In this perspective, firms operating through the business recovery period should avoid high risk weighted investments (Leach et al., 2021). In the previous study, scholars added that firms with large risk weighted investments have experienced a shortage in the operating/working capitals that leads those firms in narrow scope in reinvestments (Bhattacharjee & Juman, 2020). Therefore, the percentage of risk weighted investments should maintain below 25% of the total firm’s investments/capitals. The fourth assumption refers that a firm should establish a B2B or B2C based direct sales chain to gain almost zero agency costs and low marginal costs. In this business terminology, firms should eliminate/reduce the gap between producer and final consumer. To diminish the opportunity gap, entrepreneurs should establish a direct end value chain to reduce or eliminate agency costs that even enhance upward business performance. Eventually, the agency cost affects both variable costs and fixed costs of the firm. If the firm engages with agency based sales chain (firm→wholesaler-1→wholesaler-2→retailer→consumer) then the marginal profits would prominently decline but if the firm has direct sales chain (firm→consumer) or fixed pattern pricing policy then agency doesn’t affect the marginal profits. The fixed pattern pricing policy allows a firm to make a standard margin of costs and profits for wholesalers and consumers. For example, a resort offers a room (one day/night) for 50 dollars. The same price will be changed if a person books this room directly on the resort web-portal or through the Academia Letters, July 2021 ©2021 by the authors — Open Access — Distributed under CC BY 4.0 Corresponding Author: Amitab Bhattacharjee, bhattacharjee.ar@gmail.com Citation: Bhattacharjee, A., Jahanshahi, A.A. (2021). ARTIFICIAL LANDSCAPE STRATEGY: A BUSINESS GROWTH RECOVERY PLAN IN THE POST PANDEMIC WORLD. Academia Letters, Article 2311. https://doi.org/10.20935/AL2311. 4 agency website. In this case, the resort has little profit-sacrifices due to proving agency commissions. Next example about a sales chain is that if the agro firm sells rice at 5 dollars each kilogram to the first wholesaler then the second wholesaler buys the same item at 6 dollars from the first wholesaler. Afterward, this rice is available for consumers at 7.3 dollars in the retail stores. In this scenario, the opportunity cost of the agro producing firm is around 2.3 dollars (marginal profits↓ & opportunity costs↑). Conclusion and Limitations Finally, the artificial landscape strategy guides to make strategic changes in the assets utilization and business activities that would increase scopes of earning fresh revenues and rise up the firm’s performance. The higher performance with sustainable revenue growth would therefore boost up post pandemic business recoveries. Hence, it might be a good predictor that entrepreneurs should perform essential strategic changes as early as possible otherwise delay-implementation may fuel potential vulnerability to the opportunity costs. By the limitation, the first assumption of this strategy may decline the competitive advantages of the firm in the pharmaceutical or IT industry that even needs further investigation. 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