COVID-19 Crisis: Modernization Push at the Macroeconomic and Firm Level, Providing for Not So Disparate Opportunities and Challenges for Majors and Start-Ups

Abstract

The existential COVID-19 crisis, which was unpredictable for entrepreneurs and companies in this form, has triggered unprecedented modernization dynamics in society at large and in the economic sphere. Companies that were already geared toward resilience and agility precrisis—regardless of their size—should emerge strengthened from the crisis. Since such traits also characterize newly founded companies and start-ups, this existential crisis—thanks to a more solid and faster-than-expected economic recovery—has also favored such companies or at least did not put them into substantive disadvantage compared to large and/or well-established companies. In a way, the COVID-19 crisis was also an “equalizer” between established (large) firms and small-scale start-ups. In this respect, there is a chance that there will be more fruitful interactions between start-ups and well-established companies in the years to come, a development that can lead to the formation of more productive enterprise ecosystems. The latter may induce positive macroeconomic growth effects as well. In the context of post-COVID-19 economic cycle, which is particularly geared toward strong nominal growth of GDP globally and in Europe, companies and enterprises that have (hyper) scalable business models in addition to the success factors outlined above should perform particularly well. Moreover, the war in Ukraine has once again demonstrated the need for resilient for resilience and agility in the private sector.