Unlocking potential: collaborative approaches to crisis management and business model innovation for SMEs

Purpose This paper aims to clarify how collaborations enable Small- and Medium-sized companies (SMEs) to implement temporary business model innovations (BMIs) during turbulent times and how these innovations can evolve into permanent components of their post-crisis strategies. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses a multi-case study approach and analyses a total of 13 BMIs carried out by four small- and medium-sized Swiss breweries during and after the coronavirus disease 2019 (COVID-19) crisis. Findings The findings in this study suggest that SMEs’ synergies and collaborations with external partners amidst a crisis lead to sustainable and long-term BMIs that become part of SME’s strategy even after the crisis has passed. Unlike contemporary research suggesting that BMIs developed by SMEs in response to a crisis are typically temporary, our findings reveal that through network-based collaborations and transformative synergies SMEs access a wide pool of external resources and technologies, which lead to new value creation, delivery and capture. Such collaborative approach and transformation of unique resources makes such BMIs likely to be incorporated by SMEs as part of their permanent strategy also post-crisis. Our results also suggest that punctuated synergies leading to BMIs, that are meant to be operational only for the duration of the crisis (e.g. temporary BMIs), represent only a small proportion of all BMIs that SMEs implement to respond to a crisis. Originality/value Contrary to existing research, which suggests that BMIs developed during a crisis are meant to be operational only while the crisis lasts, our findings reveal that SMEs engage in a multiplicity of BMIs that provide enduring and transformative benefits to SME’s long after the crisis has passed. Our study shows that this is possible through SME’s collaborative efforts such as network-based collaborations and transformative synergies with external business partners, which grants them access to external resources and the possibility to experiment with novel yet long-lasting BMIs. The present study thus enhances contemporary research focusing on internal capabilities by showing that external resources are necessary for SMEs to develop BMIs during a crisis.