## 2 Innovation, Effectuation, and COVID-19 Contact Tracing  
The creation of new ventures is an uncertain initiative. Entrepreneurs and innovators create new products and services to reduce existing information asymmetries and create value while solving a problem faced by one or many individuals [4; 8; 9; 10; 11]. In this context, creating an EWS for pandemic control is an impactful innovation that allows for novel solutions for an unknown problem with drastic consequences for humankind. Understanding how innovation emerges in such a context is critical so that EWS can evolve and iterate, improving its efficiency as an essential tool for planning and preventing events such as a pandemic. In brief, the innovation process and expertise typically consist of non-predictive control heuristics, organized under the concept of effectuation [12]. Expert entrepreneurs and innovators apply the effectual principles while addressing the uncertainties faced in creating a new product and service. Such principles can be summarized as follows:  
1. Bird-in-hand principle: they build a new venture not necessarily with a goal in mind, but with the most basic resources and means they have at hand, who they are, what they know, and whom they know. From that starting point, they start imagining possibilities. 2. Affordable loss principle: they do not place large bets with the expectation of high returns. Instead, they limit risk by understanding what they can afford to lose at each step in creating a new venture. By adopting this approach, they select actions and goals with upsides even if downsides occur in the outcome. 3. Crazy quilt principle: they reduce uncertainty by partnering with self-selecting stakeholders. These partners and stakeholders join the venture creation process without any specific predetermined goal. Instead, they make initial commitments to shape the goals of the new venture and co-create a new market for it. 4. Lemonade principle: they embrace and leverage contingencies and surprises instead of rejecting them. By doing so, they interpret potential bad outcomes as clues and insights to iterate and create new products, services, and markets. They make lemonade when life throws them lemons. 5. Pilot in the plane: they focus on actions within their control instead of relying on trends or inevitable outcomes. They assume the future is not found or predicted, but it is made through human action. These principles imply a high likelihood of innovation while keeping potential losses under control and undermine the socially accepted relationship between risk and reward. Initiatives such as Operation Warp Speed and COVID-19 Smart Management System are examples of these principles in action in the process of creating new products (vaccines, antivirals) and services (contact tracing) under uncertainty (during a pandemic). Conversely, it is worth noting the early efforts of governments and organizations worldwide during the initial phases of the COVID-19 crisis in creating effective mobile contact tracing apps, with limited if not inexistent results. A case in point of early attempts to innovate by creating a global solution for COVID-19 contact tracing is the joint venture between Apple and Google that together created an Exposure Notification System [13; 14; 15] based on BLE technology. Since both companies have combined more than 99% of the mobile operating system market share worldwide, a mobile-first solution to track, trace, and communicate positive COVID-19 cases would have immediate global coverage if adopted early [16; 17]. The system uses the mobile phone's BLE technology, allowing the exchange of non-identifiable Bluetooth beacons to collect and notify anonymous data of diagnosed COVID-19 individuals, helping governments and health agencies effectively monitor outbreaks while allowing individuals to self-monitor their personal exposure risks. The system operates as shown in Figure 1a. Let us assume that [PERSON] and [PERSON] carry a smartphone.