How to Survive a Crisis: Understanding how Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises Adapted their Business Models to be Resilient during the COVID-19 Pandemic

Partner: Chair of Business Informatics, esp. Intelligent Systems and Services, Technische Universität Dresden & Chair of Business Informatics, esp. Information Systems in Trade and Industry, Technische Universität Dresden

Project duration: 3/2021 - 09/2022

Funding: VolkswagenStiftung

Methods: Qualitative Interviews, Quantitative Questionairs, Descriptive analyses and multifactorial multivariate analyses

Summary:
At the core of the project stand the question of "Which business model adaptations provided small and medium-sized enterprises with the resilience to sustain COVID-19 related measures?" The result of this project will be the identification of strategies regarding the business model adaption necessary to sustain a crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. Based on the results of the project, governments can provide small and medium companies (SMEs) with guidelines and assistance regarding business model adaptations, providing a supplement for offering subsidies.

Approach: As a first step, a detailed conceptualization of business model changes based on existing literature will be developed. Based on the information from literature, interviews with local SMEs in Göttingen and Dresden will be conducted. In these interviews, we will iteratively develop insights regarding COVID-19 related business model changes. Furthermore, we intend to carry out workshops to supplement the insights gathered during interviews. The gathered data from the interviews and workshops will be synthesized to help SME companies to learn from each other. At the end of the project, the results will be published in repots, scientific papers and conference proceedings.