Enabling Creative Small Business Innovation in a Crisis: An Abstract

Abstract

The COVID-19 pandemic has impacted many businesses but has especially impacted small businesses (Dua et al. 2020, Eggers 2020). In the early months of the pandemic, many small business owners did not have the financial ability to sustain their services due to lacking funds during the shut-down (Bartik et al. 2020). This has significant long-term effects on the global economy as small-to-medium size businesses comprise 90% of all global businesses and 55% of GDP (Salesforce 2019). The demise of small businesses could have incomprehensible long term impacts on the global economy. As a result, it is not surprising that many scholars are calling for more research to understand how businesses can continue their services during the global pandemic (e.g., Batat 2020; Heinonen and Strandvik 2020; Sajtos et al. 2020).

Although past research has investigated crisis management from a marketing perspective, little research has explored how small businesses are able to continue services in a crisis of this extent. Past research recognizes that business model innovation can offer new profitable opportunities and/or provide a shield against dynamic environmental changes (McDonald et al. 2019; Teece 2018), but less work has explored how small businesses can attain business innovation models in the challenge of a significant crisis, such as the COVID-19 pandemic. As such, we explore the following research question: What can enable small businesses’ business model innovation during a crisis?

To investigate this research question, we take an inductive, qualitative approach. Using qualitative interviews with 10 industry-diverse small business owners and 5 small business resource providers, the data reveals there are multiple paths to pursuing their interests in sustaining business. Specifically, we identify that through a cocreative process, small businesses rely on technology and intermediary organizations to foster new forms of pursuing business, specifically engaging in business model innovation (BMI). This research answers calls for research inquiring how businesses, and specifically small businesses, are able to help others cope with the crisis and support the economy (Pantano et al. 2020).