Overcoming the Challenges of COVID-19: A Multiple Case Study on Business Model Experimentation During a Crisis

Abstract

When the COVID-19 pandemic rapidly spread across the globe, its detrimental effects created an immediate need for organizational response. This research investigates incumbent firms’ business model innovation efforts in a case study on two Norwegian hospitality firms within the restaurant and bar segment whose initial business models became periodically obsolete due to the governmental restrictions employed during the COVID-19 pandemic. We found that experimentation was leveraged in an effort to find configurations which could improve firm performance, and that trial-and-error processes were of great importance in the development of such configurations when an immediate organizational response was required. Furthermore, radical experimentation provided effective responses to the COVID-19 pandemic to a high degree, while incremental experimentation rather enhanced performance when performed subsequent to a radical experiment. Additionally, this research recognizes the importance of prior learning and external sources of knowledge for rapid organizational renewal.